Skepticism

EVENTS

Feminism is not an excuse for your racism, Pat Condell

I confess, I liked his early anti-religious rants, but as he became steadily more irate about the brown hordes invading Britain, I tuned him out…until now, when I happened to run across his latest video. Holy crap, what a racist cretin.

Turn a blind eye to Islamic misogyny, or you’ll be a racist, you racist.

Way to go, Pat! Teach those strawfeminists a thing or two!

I really don’t know of any feminists who think anything on that list is at all acceptable. Who are these mysterious feminists who have no problem with honor killing or rape gangs?

I’m looking around at my circle of progressive feminists — is it Taslima? Maryam? Ophelia? Sikivu? Heina? He seems to be flinging about wild accusations with no basis in fact here; it’s hard to even imagine a woman not deeply indoctrinated into Islam who would excuse murdering other women for infidelity, for instance.

I don’t see anyone turning a blind eye to Islamic misogyny. I do see plenty of conservative racist dorks turning a blind eye to the fact that the majority of the victims of Islamic misogyny are Muslim women, and using the abhorrent tactics of Islamic fundamentalists as an excuse to blame all Muslims for their pain.

Really. Pointing out that many Islamic cultures formally endorse hateful policies is not racism; looking at every immigrant and assuming they’re there to rape ‘your’ women is.

This kind of backward, ugly attitude towards women prevails throughout much of the Islamic world and it’s being deliberately imported wholesale into western society unchallenged and uncorrected thanks to the insane “progressive” view that all cultures are equal, except, of course, for western culture, which is inferior, and this is making life more dangerous for women.

You know that backward, ugly attitude? Islam didn’t invent it. We’ve got plenty of it to go around in the western world as well. To assume that it’s being imported by brown people into a white civilization that is innocent of sexism and misogyny is, well, racist.

It’s also a reflection of an attitude Pat seems to miss. Saying that Western culture is not necessarily superior to other cultures is not implying that we’re inferior. The attitude I see among progressive feminists is that fundamentalist Islam is well and thoroughly fucked up, as is fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Judaism, and maybe we should reject all of that garbage.

The progressive part, of course, is that we also recognize that Muslims are human beings and they deserve equal rights. That’s the equality I endorse. Maybe Condell is confused because he thinks they don’t deserve that?

And now this is flaming racism.

Norway and Sweden used to be among the safest for women. Now they’re best known for their high levels of Islamic immigrant rape that nobody in power wants to acknowledge or do anything about that because that would be racist.

Consequently, Norwegian and Swedish women are no longer safe in their own countries, for cultural reasons. Indeed, Sweden has been so “enriched” by Islamic immigration that its women statistically have a 25% chance of being raped in their lifetime.

Oh, god. That is so dishonest; this is the kind of lies fed to a racist public by right wing tabloids. Sweden does have a remarkably high rate of reported rapes. But that’s because, as a progressive culture, they’ve taken great care to document all cases of sexual abuse. Nothing gets swept under the rug.

But that is a misconception, according to Klara Selin, a sociologist at the National Council for Crime Prevention in Stockholm. She says you cannot compare countries’ records, because police procedures and legal definitions vary widely.

"In Sweden there has been this ambition explicitly to record every case of sexual violence separately, to make it visible in the statistics," she says.

"So, for instance, when a woman comes to the police and she says my husband or my fiance raped me almost every day during the last year, the police have to record each of these events, which might be more than 300 events. In many other countries it would just be one record – one victim, one type of crime, one record."

And to imply that this surge of Swedish rapes is a consequence of raping hordes of Muslim immigrants is simply unconscionable. Given that between one in five and one in six women in America (and one in three if you’re Indian!) will be raped in their lifetime, with the more stringent requirements for counting an act as rape here, a figure of one in four for Sweden does not sound remarkable in comparison. Remarkable that it’s so damn high, but not remarkable in that it’s so high everywhere, even in the US, where we can’t blame it on an invasion of Muslim rapists.

Wait, you do need a cherry on top of all this racism, don’t you?

So forgive me for being blunt about this, girls, but there are more important things to get angry about than offensive language on twitter or sexist comments about your appearance.

Fuck you, too, Pat. We can be angry about genital mutilation and honor killings at the same time we’re angry about cranky old racists who are still fussed about every new wave of immigration since the Normans, and about sexist dudes who think they should be given a free pass on calling women “bitches” and “cunts” because they can find someone else who did something worse. We’re also quite capable of evaluating the relative harm of each of those without you falsely telling us that some of them do zero harm and must be ignored. You don’t get to tell me what I’m allowed to be enraged over, and let me assure you, I’ve got enough anger at all of these cultural toxins to go around. My fury encompasses whole worlds, and you’re right there in the list with mullahs and popes and KKK members and Republicans and assholes on youtube and members of UKIP and the English Defence League.

We asked several women and people of color to participate but unfortunately none were able to make it. We’re not sure why, but it’s a shame because we were planning a workshop with Richard Dawkins titled, “Things Marginalized People Should and Should Not Be Angry About: Everyday Bigotry (No) and Religion (Yes).”

Comments

I doubt women in general mean anything more to Condell than points to score against Islam. You want to talk about sexism in the western world, oh no! We have to talk about what he thinks is important, what those women say is sexism does not matter.

Could have been written by Dawkins. It’s his exact approach. Islam = bad sexism. Refusing to engage in xenophobic hatemongering about Muslims? You must not care about Islamic sexism! Paying attention to the problems that affect non-Muslim women as a result of non-Islamic sexism? Shut up whiny bitches, those Muslims ladies have it so much worse!

It’s a recipe for inaction at home (presuming your home is in the UK or USA) and prejudice towards immigrants and foreigners living in Islamic countries.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, Pat. “This thing over here is worse than what you’re complaining about right now, so you should only complain about the worse thing”? Did you really just pull another fucking “Dear Muslima”?

Cretin indeed. Tedious, lazy cretin.

I un-subbed from Pat’s Red-top Rants a while ago. Every time he’s been mentioned since then has re-re-re-confirmed that I did the right thing.

Condell claims not to be a bigot but his blatant Islamopobia puts the lie to that. He also claims to be a centerist, however his support of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) shows he’s firmly on the right.

So forgive me for being blunt about this, girls, but there are more important things to get angry about than offensive language on twitter or sexist comments about your appearance.

Of course there’s the infantilizing use of the world girls, as well as a generally condescending attitude. Is it so hard to at least appear to be on the same side as the people you’re trying to convince while you’re directly talking to them? Appearantly it is. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

A lot of what Pat has to say (in other videos) is bang on, but I agree with you PZ. I’ve never met his brand of feminist, and I don’t think he has either. He loves making stawmen and then lashing out at them. It’s easy to do and you can leave out all nuance.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Who are these mysterious feminists who have no problem with honor killing or rape gangs?

He’s speaking in Wingnutglote: “feminists who have no problem with honor killing or rape gangs?” in Wingnutglote translates as “feminists who think that honor killing or rape gangs does not grant old white guys the right to treat people of muslim descent like shit” in English.

***

I do see plenty of conservative racist dorks turning a blind eye to the fact that the majority of the victims of Islamic misogyny are Muslim women

It’s also obvious to anyone who give a fuck that a great many muslim women have done way more to undermine mysoginist wives beater than the racists dorks club, especially the european racists dorks who long for the “good old days” of the colonial empires when one rich european could go in Muslim majority countries and treat the locals like their collection of fucktoys.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Did he say something about Arabs (which make 14% of Muslims, by the way). No. He talked about Muslims and Islam. This has nothing to do with race and there is no hint of racism for Pat, at least in that video.

Yeah, for me this guy is quite simple: “Hey, Muslim women! I care about you so much that I’m going to tell you every one of your male relatives is a terrorist rapist waiting to get at my white women. And when I’m done liberating you girls, you can come here and make and fetch me a sandwich with a beer on the side like a girl oughta, to show me how grateful you are. Oh, and while you’re fetching my slippers, if you’re going to be on your knees anyway…”

Did he say something about Arabs (which make 14% of Muslims, by the way). No. He talked about Muslims and Islam. This has nothing to do with race and there is no hint of racism for Pat, at least in that video.

So your defense of Condell is that he’s “only” a xenophobic bigot in ways that by some technical definition aren’t racist? (And then people wonder why “Islamophobia” is a word. It’s because when we call people on anti-Muslim bigotry, they insist that they aren’t exactly racist and expect that to convince people that this form of prejudice and discriminatory behavior is acceptable.)

Years ago I saw a couple of Pat’s videos and thought “wow, this isn’t too bad!”. Then I saw a couple more of Pat’s videos, ones dealing with Islam, and thought “wow, this guy’s a massive racist!”. He went in the “shithead pile” after that. I need more massive racists in my life like I need a hole in the head.

cranky old racists who are still fussed about every new wave of immigration since the Normans

I am SO stealing this.

Pah! I’ve still got my worries about the Jutes…

Heh. It makes you wonder how far back Condell would want to go. As sad and desperate as the whole matter is, Islam has mostly just been a favoured target of the far right for the last dozen years. That’s not to say his attitudes aren’t wrongheaded, vicious, hateful and destructive, but if he didn’t have Muslims to attack he would have found someone else. Neanderthals, probably. “Coming over here, hunting our deer, seducing our women and laying flowers on their graves…”

Did he say something about Arabs (which make 14% of Muslims, by the way). No. He talked about Muslims and Islam. This has nothing to do with race and there is no hint of racism for Pat, at least in that video.

Well that’s the first I’ve heard of Pat Condell so I’m basing this comment just on what I heard here. I’m a socialist atheist, so I’m probably at the opposite end of the political spectrum to Pat, who probably is racist as well as having a bee in his bonnet about feminism.
However I do believe the point he makes about Islamic misogyny and the lack of opprobrium towards it is well made. It’s not that this misogyny is never criticised, it’s just that it seems to be put into the same category as Texan bible bashers trying to ban the teaching of evolution in schools, when in fact it is, by several magnitudes, worse than that.
I think Richard Dawkins has started to speak out against the more medieval aspects of Islam and it’s about time more atheists, feminists, humanists or just plain people did the same.

Sorry guys and gals, but being muslim is not belonging to a particular race. The majority of muslims in the world aren’t arabs, and anyway arabs are caucasians like most of the highly-privileged westerners posting here. Presumably an atheist ought to be able to criticise Islam and muslims without being accused of the sin of racism? Not much point in being an atheist if you can only criticise relatively harmless catholics and their eucharist. You may ban me now and I’ll be glad of it.

Condell has been a virulent racist and xenophobe for years. To offer just one illustrative example from an earlier video: in “Goodbye Sweden,” he says “no country has done more to embrace the multicultural nightmare… I mean dream… than Sweden”; accuses the Swedish government of trying to “wipe their culture clean out of existence”, fearmongers about the imagined danger of Sweden becoming “the first European Islamic state”, and asserts that it is “now unconstitutional to uphold Swedish values in Sweden”. He goes on to allege that immigrants are responsible for an increase in rapes in Sweden, saying that Sweden is now “the rape capital of Europe” and explicitly linking this to “immigrant Islamic culture”, and argues that “[w]hen you allow millions of people to immigrate from places where they mutilate their daughters as a matter of course, where they kill them in a heartbeat over some twisted sense of honour, and where rape victims are treated as criminals, it doesn’t take a genius to know that you’re going to be importing these values and attitudes as well, wholesale, unless you take steps to prevent it.” This is, virtually verbatim, the kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric we hear from xenophobic movements such as the British National Party and the English Defence League. It’s the same old tabloid racist tropes.

I’m glad to see that his racism is now being called out more frequently within the atheist community, and I am particularly glad that PZ wrote this post. A few years ago Condell was very popular with atheists, and was even endorsed publicly by Dawkins.

Thank you so much for setting me straight on my progressive feminism! There are just so many icky things going on in the world, and I’m so overwhelmed by the numbers of my own countrymen who rape, beat, kill, torture and mentally abuse women here that I can’t help but think that stopping that should be my main priority. But I can see now that being upset when men try to silence women who speak out about it by calling them bitches, cunts, whores, etc., etc., and threatening them with unspeakable acts, is really a stupid thing to concern myself with. I’m such a silly goose!

I know how busy you are, but if you could find just a few minutes could you PLEASE make another video with bullet points prioritizing what my concerns should be? So far, I have learned that I shouldn’t be supportive of Islamic misogyny. Thanks so much! I detest Christian misogyny, but apparently I don’t hate Islamic misogyny quite enough for your taste. Please also include instructions on how I should go about stopping that. Surely you have a plan or you wouldn’t be spouting off, blaming feminists for turning a blind eye. What course of action do you have in mind? Should the world outlaw religion? I’m all for that! I await your insightful response with bated breath.

Sorry guys and gals, but being muslim is not belonging to a particular race.

Sorry idjit, it doesn’t stop anybody claiming muslims are bad as being labeled racists, which is synonymous with bigots here in the USA. Trying to be a stupid philosopher on definitions shows you are an apologist for racism and bigotry, and is a ploy of the MRA cult. Stop apologizing, and start criticizing those who should be criticized. The racists, bigots, and misogynists.

You know that backward, ugly attitude? Islam didn’t invent it. We’ve got plenty of it to go around in the western world as well. To assume that it’s being imported by brown people into a white civilization that is innocent of sexism and misogyny is, well, racist.

Seriously, do you people even bother to read what I wrote before making stuff up about it?

As for the hairsplitting over whether his attacks on Islam are racist: yes, they are. Muslims may not be “a race”, but that doesn’t mean that rhetoric about Muslims and Islam can’t be racist. (Asylum-seekers aren’t “a race” either, but the Daily Mail‘s hateful rhetoric about asylum-seekers is still racist.) Muslims in Britain are a minority group strongly associated – both in the public imagination, and to a large extent in demographic reality – with certain immigrant communities of colour. Given this, the far right’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is often a convenient cipher for racism. Their real intention is to push an agenda of excluding immigrants and foreign cultures from Britain – which is, more-or-less by definition, a racist agenda.

It’s also galling when Islamophobes suggest that we on the left are turning a blind eye to misogyny, abuse and coercion in the Muslim world. Not so. Quite the opposite – we fight against anti-immigrant policies because those policies harm the victims of these abuses. Anti-immigrant policies have caused a situation where asylum-seekers who have fled violence, including Islamist violence, are detained in hellish detention camps like Yarl’s Wood, put through a traumatic interrogation process, accused of lying, and threatened with deportation. Women who have suffered abuses like rape, domestic violence, forced marriage and FGM are put through a second traumatic ordeal at the hands of the British state. Condell says not a word about that: because he doesn’t care. His agenda is not about protecting Muslim women from abuse, it’s about excluding Muslims and Muslim culture from Britain, because he is a racist. He’s using Muslim women as rhetorical props to push an agenda which directly harms them.

‘This is, virtually verbatim, the kind of anti-immigrant rhetoric we hear from xenophobic movements such as the British National Party and the English Defence League. It’s the same old tabloid racist tropes.’

If someone is ranting about how immigrants are going to destroy civilization, and they are focusing this rant on a group that is overwhelmingly non-white, “racist” seems a pretty fair term for them. The fact that Islam is not actually a race is a fact that is pretty irrelevant and usually ignored by the racists – because the racists are usually utterly ignorant and/or going for plausible deniability.
Also, if he had been talking about “Arabs” in the context of the UK, that would just add to the “ignorant” assumption, because Muslims in the UK mostly come from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and are therefore not Arabs. And “Arab” is a cultural, rather than a racial, grouping.

In Australia we have a similar problem with asylum seekers (many from Sri Lanka and the Middle East, some fleeing war zones we’ve contributed to) being treated similarly detained, often for years, in shitty tent camps on nearby islands (not in Oz, because the previous Labor (nominally centre-left) government removed the Australian mainland from our “immigration zone”) without charge, without recourse, without hope of getting a visa at the end of it and often without their children (who are also detained). The previous and newly-elected Liberal (conservative) governments engaged in a race to the bottom over who could demonise asylum seekers the most in order to gain votes. Slogans like “stop the boats” and promises to “tow them back” have been part of the rhetoric for years, and it all appeals to the barely-concealed racism that permeates discourse in this country. It began with conservative PM Howard’s appalling lies during the Tampa crisis and his manufactured “children overboard” controversy of 2001; things have only become worse since then.

The sad thing is that during the first real influx of “boat people” from Cambodia and Vietnam in the early 80s, the rhetoric was racist but not nearly as bad, the people weren’t treated like criminals and these days SE Asian people are as common a sight on Australian streets as those of Mediterrannean descent who began arriving in the 1950s. Now, thanks to Howard and the opportunistic racial profiling that followed 9/11 (indulged in by both sides of politics), we’re stuck with a legacy of demonising asylum seekers to the point where they’re tried, convicted and sentenced never to receive protection in Australia.

It’s a stain on our nation that our governments won’t live up to their humanitarian obligations or even up to international law; just as attitudes like Pat’s are a stain on atheism and freethought. His kind of bullshit bigotry is commonplace in Australia – it’s often dressed up as concerns for national security or outrage over “queue jumpers” or “illegals” – but it’s bigotry at its core.

Lumping Dawkins as being exactly like this no-good is really low, and uncalled for. Quite low, and simply wrong.

I wasn’t saying that Dawkins is on a par with Condell: he certainly isn’t. But he did explicitly endorse Condell a few years ago, and as far as I know has not apologized for doing so or retracted his endorsement.

Boys and girls! Am I tired of the new HATE RICHARD! cultists here. They really are darn unreasonable.

Who and who?

And how precisely does a number of people disagreeing with specific things Dawkins has said and specific attitudes he’s displayed constitute a cult? Take your histrionic hyperbole hat off and try again.

Lumping Dawkins as being exactly like this no-good is really low, and uncalled for.

Yeah, it’s not like Dawkins has ever brought up the plight of Muslim women as a dismissal of a Western woman’s experience with misogyny. It’s not like he’s even once judged, say, unwanted sexual advances in enclosed spaces as “zero bad” because women elsewhere in the world get their genitals sliced off. Nope, never. Drawing a comparison between the two of fellows is wholly unwarranted because they have no points in common, especially not where it comes to patronizing, minimizing, anti-feminist rhetoric.

“Saying that Western culture is not necessarily superior to other cultures is not implying that we’re inferior.”
I have always felt that the superiority of Western culture consisted of the ability to criticize it’s own weaknesses and to do something about it. From this point of view Pat Condell and the likes actually undermine that superiority.
Sweden seems to understand this.

We Western women could focus more on other women’s plights if these asshats would stop calling us bitches, etc, of propagating everyday sexism. So, you Pat, are the reasons we have to fight sexism and misogyny on both fronts. Does anyone know if Pat boy is doing anything for these women in other countries? Because if he isn’t, he definitely needs to shut up and listen.

Cultures =/= race. Any inmigrant can adapt to any culture no matter the color of his skin.

Lovely job missing several points there cupcake. The most salient one is that those who rave about the Muslim threat tend to focus their ire almost exclusively on Muslims of Arab or North African descent, and often presume anyone who looks to them like they are of Arab or North African descent is likewise presumed to be a Muslim. This is why we point out that they’re acting pretty fucking racist.

The fact that it ignores all manner of context and treats every statement as completely isolated from every other statement.

Did I say something about defending him? I was just pointing out a inappropiate adjetive out of nowhere in a fairly common misunderstanding that still puzzles me.

I can only assume that this is due to either deliberate blindness or massive privilege-based ignorance. It’s not a conclusion that’s at all hard to arrive at if you’re paying the faintest bit of attention.

Did I say something about defending him? I was just pointing out a inappropiate adjetive out of nowhere in a fairly common misunderstanding that still puzzles me.

Oh, hey, didn’t think I’d have to reuse this so soon:

“It happened in that big city on the Thames which was once the capital of a worldwide empire and is notable for features like that one famous clock tower…”
“Okay, so it happened in London.”
“I NEVER SAID ‘LONDON!'”

Lumping Dawkins as being exactly like this no-good is really low, and uncalled for. Quite low, and simply wrong.

If one were to assert that Dawkins is “exactly” like Pat Condell, then one would indeed be “simply” wrong. Because that is a very simplistic notion, that the two might be exactly alike, and of course they simply are not exactly alike, and thus the notion is simply wrong.

However, what I asserted–and yes, I am the one who went there, right out of the gate–was that it “could have been written by Dawkins,” which I think is not an unreasonable proposition to anyone aware of the controversy Dawkins has courted by expressing statements prejudiced against Muslims and belittling towards feminism and social science. The fact is that there is a commonality to the views they share. That there is a commonality ought to give Dawkins pause. And anyone who supports him, too.

Of course, the fact that you had to distort the actual claim (Dawkins and Condell have commonalities) into something it wasn’t (Dawkins and Condell are exactly alike) in order to express your disapproval should also give you pause.

Boys and girls! Am I tired of the new HATE RICHARD! cultists here. They really are darn unreasonable.

You know what I am tired of? “Dear Muslima.” Pitting women against each other. She is worse off, so YOU shut up. I was tired of it before Dawkins wrote it. I am tired of it now that Condell is spouting that tired old propaganda again. I am tired of Dawkins’ fan boys and girls trying to ape his pedantically condescending, sarcastic style without the intellectual chops to back it up. I am tired of science conferences with organizers who are too damn lazy to look up some lady scientists on the google machines. I am tired of rape being a global epidemic.

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, as Fannie Lou Hamer said. So you’ll pardon me if I simply note your tiredness and continue on without any change.

I am having a fantasy of having a feminist UN force. This UN force could go around the world fighting sexism and misogyny using humiliation instead of violence. So everyday sexism would get a wedgie. I think Pat Condell has earned a few wedgies. They could make certain Islamists wear burqas. If a person physically harms a women, then he or she has to clean her house for a week with a toothbrush. It helps me to have these silly fantasies when I feel frustrated with how the world is sometimes

Cultures =/= race. Any inmigrant can adapt to any culture no matter the color of his skin.

That depends on the messages that culture has about people with his (or her….?) skin color.

Also, there’s a lot of racism involved in who is expected to adapt to which cultures. White people worldwide are both given far more leeway in failing to adapt to different cultures and offered far more accolades for any success. I mean, by tradition, white people are colonizers. Adaptation isn’t our thing; imposition is.

And that’s not even factoring in how a lot of PoC immigrants don’t necessarily want to move to a different country but feel it necessary. White people, on the other hand, more frequently immigrate out of a desire to experience someplace different.

Cultures =/= race. Any inmigrant can adapt to any culture no matter the color of his skin.

Tell it to Pat “When you allow millions of people to immigrate from places where they mutilate their daughters as a matter of course, where they kill them in a heartbeat over some twisted sense of honour, and where rape victims are treated as criminals, it doesn’t take a genius to know that you’re going to be importing these values and attitudes as well, wholesale, unless you take steps to prevent it” Condell.

besides the violent emotion that racists display the thing that stands out and I find both appalling and surprising, is how openly expressed is the almost total irrationality
I mean it is from fantasy land
there is no exception either

To one side while I wait for a response,
@Xaverius 54:
What Dalillama said. And on a more coldly pragmatic note, as tempting as it is to just let the various insane murder cults kill each other off, the fact is that believers are intrinsically unstable. If they were rational, the Christians and the Muslims would have worked together to herd all of us into camps decades ago–that alone should give us pause and make us think about how they act and why.

I won’t deny for a second that Islam is abhorrent–nobody here will. It’s an Abrahamic, Yahwist faith–it consists solely of slapping a beard on the darkness in your own mind and praying to it. But the particular hatred of Islam by non-atheists, especially other Yahwists, is usually deeply rooted in racism, cultural privilege, or both.

Consider what happened after the Boston Marathon. Islam was never targeted–Islam is invisible. What was targeted was brown skin, beards, and headcloths–the things that people THINK are a mark of Islam. Nobody noticed the cute, vaguely Eastern European looking white boy with the jewfro–they were too busy gunning down Sikhs, who are an utterly harmless religious minority in the States, but, what with the turbans and the impressive facial hair, have the extreme misfortune to look more like our cultural stereotype of what a Muslim looks like than many actual Muslims. The same thing happened to the poor stiffs after 9/11–and something tells me Wade Page did not shoot up that Gurdwara because he had some specific theological bone to pick with the Guru Granth Sahib. I think it’s reasonable to say to the contrary that he is, to echo Dalillama, pretty fucking racist.

You understand why this is a problem now? It’s wonderful to notice that religion is a moral poison that lies at the heart of almost every social ill you can name*–but what’s more important is to realize how it warps even the people who just live here. You can’t think rationally when all the data is prefiltered for you by media outlets who want you to be scared all the time and peers who secretly suspect that abortion is a plot to lower the white birthrate.

And trusting these people to target only dangerous fanatics in their hunt for the enemy is a historically questionable strategy.

The “Muslims aren’t a race” argument reminds me of an argument I’ve spotted a few times in the wild, that because race is a social construct no one and nothing can actually be racist. *shudder* I mean, it’s racism; no one said it had to be rational. Are people just blissfully unaware of the tabloid-racism of the “invading brown Muslim hordes”?

(of course not)

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

I had a friend who used “Yellow Peril” as her online ‘nym back in the 1990s. I’m sure she’s just waiting for us to boil this down into something catchier. “Muslim extremists” and “Islamists” don’t have quite the same ring to them. Even your “invading brown Muslim hordes” example loses something in the comparison. Maybe our racists just aren’t quite as rhetorically skilled as yesteryear’s racists?

Sadly that won’t make it easier to convince the racist followers to switch directions.

@Tyros 67
That’s another point scored for the pro-Postmodernist, we-need-jargon-so-WE-know-what-we’re-talking-about camp. There are so many asterisks that belong in any sentence about race that would specifically address that argument if they were made explicit.

“Social construct” is not synonymous with “nonexistent or otherwise powerless.”

Money is a social construct.

Actually, several different varieties of social construct mashed together into an arch-construct. Yet, strangely, the people who claim race isn’t real because it’s a social construct never want to hand over all the cash in their wallets to me.

Fuck you, too, Pat. We can be angry about genital mutilation and honor killings at the same time we’re angry about cranky old racists who are still fussed about every new wave of immigration since the Normans, and about sexist dudes who think they should be given a free pass on calling women “bitches” and “cunts” because they can find someone else who did something worse. We’re also quite capable of evaluating the relative harm of each of those without you falsely telling us that some of them do zero harm and must be ignored.

OK, I get it. PZ is angry about both heinous misogynistic acts such as genital mutilation and also angry about misogynistic comments. Being angry about one does not preclude being angry about the other. And saying something bad is not excused by finding someone who said or did something worse. I understand all of this. What I don’t understand is why misogyny has become such a major focus of this blog. Pharyngula used to be about promoting science and debunking pseudoscience. And about promoting critical thinking and debunking supernatural claims. What happened?

“Most Muslims aren’t Arabs, and Arabs are Caucasians which means White and privileged, so Islamiphobia doesn’t have anything to do with racism. And besides, They deserve it because they’re all degenerate foreigners who act funny”

What a load of self-serving disingenuous crud.

Some Arabs have pale skin. Plenty don’t. And that really doesn’t matter. Race, as we’ve all seen about a thousand times, is a social construct. 200 years ago the Irish weren’t White. Now they are. 100 years ago Jews and Italians weren’t White. Now they are. In Apartheid South Africa Asians weren’t White except for Japanese who were. In the US and to some extent Europe Arabs weren’t White until fairly recently. Then they were. Now they are becoming non-White again, even the Christian and Jewish ones.

Muslims have been constructed as a single group, and there’s a very strong racial slant to the hatred.

It’s not like the haters make much of a distinction. They’re all Brown and Bad (well except for a few White race-traitors who convert to heathen ways). It doesn’t matter that Muslims in the US are MORE likely to identify first as Americans, second as Muslims which is pretty much the reverse of our Evangelicals according to the Pew poll a while back. It doesn’t signify that Muslims are the vast majority of the victims of terrorism worldwide and have pretty darned negative attitudes towards the practice overall. They’re the Evil Inhuman Other and must all be considered murderous Wogs except for a few “good” Mohammedans who do as they’re told and acknowledge the superiority of White Culture in all ways.

Even the bit of the rhetoric I could stomach before turning off the video plays to the racist tropes. They’re Not Like Us. They’ll never be like us. They’re going to steal and rape Our Precious White Women. They’re savages, not quite human. This cranky old dim-bulb doesn’t make any distinction between a Research Associate at USC, a hillbilly from Yemen, a British cop, a blissed out pacifist Sufi, a Boko Haram thug or the Indian guy who makes killer samosas in a food cart downtown. They’re all exactly the same to him.

The degree of condescension towards Muslim women, especially Muslim feminists, is appalling. The Old White Man knows about your problems better than you do. And he knows what’s best for you. The first thing you have to do, missy, is give up your horrible religion and your disgusting language and your filthy culture and your father, your husband and your brothers because the Magical White Guy says they’re bad for you.

It’s beyond his comprehension that these women know exactly what’s wrong or have any useful ideas about how to fix it. Nope. They’re simply ignorant children who need to shut up and do what he says. And when his country invades theirs, bombs their cities, sets up a puppet government and tries to steal their nation’s wealth they should be grateful, dammit!

Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain

Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”

Take up the White Man’s burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Consequently, Norwegian and Swedish women are no longer safe in their own countries, for cultural reasons.
Pat, as a Norwegian I’ve had my fill of “Europe is being Islamificated” drama queens. If I wanted to play the “what about” game, I might advise that you look to your own native country, whose “Catholicification” certainly doesn’t improve the safety of women.

I can’t agree with Dawkins’ description of Condell: “Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he is on our side.”

Suavity? Intelligence? “Our” side?

Three years ago, I was surprised and disappointed when the Dawkins website featured a news story with a headline stating that German chancellor Angel Merkel had said: “Germany Will Become An Islamic State.” This was quickly shown to be a gross distortion of her comments, and the “story” linked to an extreme far right/Christian website! The moderators duly apologized after some negative comments, but the fact that the “story” appeared on the website at all without being checked points to something being very wrong.

In short, show a little care when choosing your bedfellows. “The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend” and all that.

It’s a fine line to walk for all of us. Yes, I think the world would be better off with a lot less religion, especially Salafist or Charedi or Evangelical or BJP Hindu Nationalist or Randroid Capitalist for that matter. I can look at a woman from New Square or Kabul or some Quiverfull community and say to myself “That God of yours is a no-good abusive putz.”

But when an outsider comes and says “Everything you define yourself as is disgusting and primitive. If you were smart you’d give it up and be just like me,” he is not going to win many hearts and minds. What he’ll get is an understandable “Fuck you and the mule you rode in on, White Man.” If the outsider is from a country that colonized or recently invaded the listener it shouldn’t be surprising if the message is rejected out of hand, even violently.

Change from within, done by the people within the culture with their knowledge of the situation and what needs to be done is much more effective and long-lasting than the Seagull Approach (fly in, make a lot of noise, crap all over everything and fly off) by outsiders no matter how well meaning. Encouraging and helping indigenous solutions is almost always the way to go. Offer advice when asked, resources as appropriate, experience when it’s called for. But ultimately it’s Muslim women who will have to live with the results in Muslim countries. Their indigenous knowledge and concerns must not be discounted.

So Pat Condell considers Islamist sexism the only sexism worth worrying about? Would he like it if someone told him not to whine about his pocket getting picked because it’s not as bad as being robbed at gunpoint?

Turning to “go back to where you came from!” xenophobia, I once imagined what people in what’s now England might have said over the centuries.

1066 CE: Those Normans should go back to where they came from!
800 CE: Those Danes should go back to where they came from!
450 CE: Those Angles and Saxons and Jutes should go back to where they came from!
43 CE: Those Romans should go back to where they came from!
500 BCE: Those Celts should go back to where they came from!
2700 BCE: Those Beaker people should go back to where they came from!
4000 BCE: Those farmers should go back to where they came from!

1. Straw feminism. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a single one of us who isn’t outraged by the abuse of women wherever it happens to be.

2. We have a really bad habit of wanting to meddle in culturally difficult situations and mending matters worse. Some of us have learned that we shouldn’t be meddling in complex situations, often hindering the indigenous feminist movement. What I think needs to be done is to support the indigenous feminism because they know a hell of a lot more about the complexities of their situation than we do. The last thing they need is for us to go in there on white chargers to “rescue” them, trampling on all the good work they’ve already done and depriving them of their agency in their own lives.

We need to help them do what they know they need to do. Money, training, scholarships, moral support, friendship, encouragement, whatever they need but not to take matters out of their hands because “white people know best”. Quite simply: we don’t and to believe we do is mindboggling cultural arrogance.

3. We talk about these issues all the time. We know it happens and we disagree vociferously and we want to help but we can’t know the best way to proceed in dealing with it. Only the people already at work within the culture know that.

In Apartheid South Africa Asians weren’t White except for Japanese who were.

That’s my favorite piece of trivia for showing how race is a social construct. Up to 1962, Japanese were “colored”. Then the discrimination against them that entailed became economically and politically inconvenient, so it was just decided they were white!

skemono, Ha! I wasn’t aware of that example of the silliness of apartheid. My un-awareness is a bit embarrassing, as apartheid, or more accurately, anti-apartheid was one my Big Causes at the time…

Incidentally, I just call Pat’s and Dawkin’s shite bigotry (so yes, they are both bigots). Avoids the silly nit-picking about “racism”, Arab, Muslim, islam, misogyny, xian, raping children cult, and what-have-you-isms…

I’m from the U.K. This is how racism rolls here. Pat’s been racist from Day One. – Noah Smith@12

Condell has been a virulent racist and xenophobe for years. – Walton@31

QFT. British racists – even members of the BNP, the leadership of which is Nazi in ideology – tend not to go in for the explicit use of racial epithets, and to cloak their racism in “cultural” terminology. This is probably partly because the UK has laws against “inciting racial hatred”, but I think goes beyond that, since explicit assertions of racial superiority/inferiority are not illegal. What part such laws have played in making such assertions socially unacceptable, I don’t know. They were more recently extended to cover inciting religious hatred, but Condell’s spew is unlikely to land him in court, as in practice the laws only get used in the most extreme cases.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy to change cultural beliefs. Accordingly, if you bring in people with certain beliefs then you have to live with the results. As Khan notes:

“As you can see, Western European Muslims are much more conservative than the general population. Or, more accurately they’re much more reactionary and culturally alien. The reality is that the status quo in Western Europe is toward acceptance of homosexuality without the sort of debates we have in the United States. Interestingly you can’t even calculate a real ratio for British Muslims to the general public, not one British Muslim surveyed would admit to homosexuality being morally acceptable. When it comes to white European attitudes toward Muslims some of it clearly boils down toward racism, but the fact is that most Turks are no more colored than many Southern Europeans, and Britain’s Punjabi Sikh population of working class origin is the source of less tension than Britain’s Punjabi Pakistani Muslim population. There are complex feedback loops at work. Muslim immigrants bring a lot of geopolitical baggage because of the nature of the Muslim world. But, we can’t pretend as if the Islamic world also doesn’t have its own particular suite of values which makes it distinctive.”

If Western countries continue to allow large numbers from those countries to enter then invariably they will end up having the same problems? Also, note that already many jewish people are having to leave Western countries due to hostilities from Muslim communities. You have to face reality.

PZ, come on! He’s not anti-brown people. He’s trying to stand up for our Western values where women are not forced into marriages, where teenage girls aren’t removed form their homes and thrust into some stranger’s house as his live-in slave, where women aren’t stoned to death for getting raped. There is nothing wrong with our Western values in comparison to the primitive, religion-soaked tripe that the Muslims are dragging into Europe.

#85, that same argument was used in the 1830s against Irish immigrants.
And it gets reused with a different group as its target every generation or so.

Here in the US, there’s really only one thing in our culture that hasn’t changed at all over 200 plus years – the grandchildren of one wave of immigrants’ complaints about the current wave. That’s a constant.

Pointing out that many Islamic cultures formally endorse hateful policies is not racism; looking at every immigrant and assuming they’re there to rape ‘your’ women is.

Pretty sexist too – considering the sentence construction implies ownership of women, which is precisely the sort of thing he criticizes “Islam” for.

Personally I would use the term xenophobia – because that is what it is when you get right down to it. Condell doesn’t really want to deal with the “evils” of Islam, he wants convenient ‘foreign’ villains he can point to in order to distract people from the fact that his way of thinking isn’t all that different.

observer17@85,
The fact that one of your sources is a former leader of the vilely racist VVD (something you preferred not to mention) tells us a good deal about you. As for your other sources, they are remarkably free of hard evidence. Of course antisemitic acts should be condemned and, where they cross into illegality, severely punished, but those who have a long record of antisemitism, the far right, are now prominent in attacks on Muslims: their pretended concern for Jews is as hypocritical as their pretended feminism.

Pointing out that many Islamic cultures formally endorse hateful policies is not racism;

In theory, no. Ignoring your own culture’s and focusing entirely on other people’s, as Condell does, is.

2. We have a really bad habit of wanting to meddle in culturally difficult situations and mending matters worse. Some of us have learned that we shouldn’t be meddling in complex situations, often hindering the indigenous feminist movement. What I think needs to be done is to support the indigenous feminism because they know a hell of a lot more about the complexities of their situation than we do. The last thing they need is for us to go in there on white chargers to “rescue” them, trampling on all the good work they’ve already done and depriving them of their agency in their own lives.

We need to help them do what they know they need to do. Money, training, scholarships, moral support, friendship, encouragement, whatever they need but not to take matters out of their hands because “white people know best”. Quite simply: we don’t and to believe we do is mindboggling cultural arrogance.

People like Condell and all those who defend this bullshit aren’t really concerned about women and misogyny. You can pretty much tell by their reaction whenever they get called out on it or when feminists try to raise any topic.
The mistreatment of women is just a convenient tool to spread their message of hate and bigotry.
They whine and howl about how muslim women are mistreated in the west, how daughters are sent off in arranged marriages, about honour killings*, but they never ever lift a finger in support of things that would actually help those women because many of the things that would help are actually immigration related and would grant those women permanent residency ireespective of their father’s or husband’s sponsorship.
In short, they are not really worried about muslims doing those things, they are worried about them doing that over here where they can see it.

*How do you call it if a muslim guy kills his wife/child because he’s losing control?
-Honour killing
How do you call it if a white guy kills his wife/child because he’s losing control?
-Family tragedy
It’s the dog that doesn’t bark every time a western woman gets murdered by her current or ex-partner (which is 50% of them).
It’s the lawmakers that don’t promise to do something every time a child is murdered in their bed because their dad though he would rather kill them than see them off with his ex.
It’s that we all know about the Woolwich murder but not about the violent attacks on muslims in the wake.

#85, that same argument was used in the 1830s against Irish immigrants.

The same argument was used in France against spanish, portugese, italian, polish immigrants… The funny thing is the french upper class was and remain disproportionately catholic, so you had the Bon Bourgeois bien cathos saying that the immigrants’ catholicism was violent, backward, mysoginistic, unlike their catholicism which was of course enlightened and progressive.

In fact, I daresay it’s only a matter of time before a wave of mostly atheist immigrants come to live in western countries only to be greeted by pat Condell’s ilk explaining that their nativist atheist is much more betterest than the newcommers’ primitive uncounth atheism

What’s pedantry of realizing the use of an inappropiate word? It would make more sense if Myers said it was sexist. At least Pat actually targets a certain gender in the video (saying girls) even when feminists can be of both genders or none for all he specified otherwise.

I didn’t say “Hey, cut Pat some slack, he isn’t actually racist”. I said “what the hell is the racist word doing here?”

Although I wonder for his consistency if he’s calling for a problem to be solved and then assumes the problem is race based, because race is a bit harder to change than cultural behaviour. But as I said, if he actually directly attacked Arabs in an incoherent manner, that would be racist, like I’ve been told he does in another video.

@Dalillama, Schmott Guy

India and Indonesia make some 400 million Muslims on their own. If the majority of Muslims isn’t Asian, then it’s probably African.

The most salient one is that those who rave about the Muslim threat tend to focus their ire almost exclusively on Muslims of Arab or North African descent, and often presume anyone who looks to them like they are of Arab or North African descent is likewise presumed to be a Muslim.

Aren’t you doing the same by assuming any critique of Islam is racism? You think “oh, he must mean the minority that makes up the most visible stereotype, and he must mean the color of their skin, because there’s nothing else to like or dislike of Islam”. Myers and Pat, if he has a vlog that is mostly about attacking Islam, should know better about the diversity of people that follow the second most common religion.

Also I like how you assume I’m from a group you’d call privileged for no reason at all.

@Jonathan, der Ewige Noobe 66

Yeah, I believe I could quote on my own another case of Sikhs being targeted just because they look like a silly stereotype quite recently. But still, that’s stereotype is silly for a reason, and I expected everyone here to know better. You can have a problem with Islam and not have a problem with Arabs.

Heck, I don’t know if I’m digging myself deeper or making my problem to get to understand this easier now, but here it goes: it’s the same as when there was this backlash calling Dawkins racist because he pointed out the number of nobels of a university agaisnt a religion.

I won’t defend Pat because I don’t even know him well enough to know if he deserves it (what other comments say about him doesn’t sound too good though) but I’ll defend Dawkins in that one in that he probably meant what he said he meant: to point out that Muslims boasting about their numbers and science doesn’t live up to scrutiny today, and wondering why it was that. One could think “oh, it’s maybe because of the poor state of education in some of the coutries where Islam is majority” o “oh, it’s probably because Islam is anti-intellectual”, or even “maybe the guys that give nobels don’t like Muslims for some reason, are nobel prizes really a good unit of measure?”, but that’s what one thinks after a short twitter and I don’t know which of these Dawkins believes. It’s probably not the “lelelele it’s because they are brown and brown people are stupid lol” many people seemed to get.

Merely pointing out that they did great things in the past means that they could do it in the near future if a few things changed, which goes agaisnt any kind of racism. Races (and their alleged traits, don’t take my words in your own context again and assume I meant I believe they exist) can’t be changed that easily.

‘Despite what the Palestinian public-relations industry, i.e. the western media might tell you, this isn’t about territory, and it isn’t about justice or human rights, because Arab societies don’t know the meanings of those words.’

It’s the start of the new academic year, and as I walk around campus, it’s teeming with excited and apprehensive young people starting their university education. This time of year always lifts my spirits, vicariously experiencing the students’ optimism and thirst for knowledge. Among them I see many young Muslim women: smart, sassy British Muslim women, with opportunities which many of their sisters elsewhere in the world can only dream of. I really can’t relate to anyone who sees this as a bad thing.

What an outrageous accusation by PZ. I must have watched nearly all of Pat’s videos and I’ve never heard him make any racist comment, and especially not the “brown hordes” that PZ keep mentioning.
Islam is NOT a race! It’s an ideology that is entirely open to criticism – or ought to be.
In Britain, there are countless journalists and political activists of both genders who, quite rightly, demand equal rights for women in the workplace, etc, but hardly anyone except a small number of secularists speak out about the truly disgusting subjugation of women in Islamic cultures within Britain or elsewhere in the world. It’s absurd when you have countless debates in parliament and on TV/radio about the rights of (most) women in Britain to be entitled to extra maternity leave or whatever, but almost no concern at all for a minority of British women who are subject to forced marriages, FGM, compulsory wearing of the Niqab (as is the case in 3 British schools), etc. This is what he is talking about.

Islam is NOT a race! It’s an ideology that is entirely open to criticism

Your race claim fails if the fear of the brown/black hordes is underneath the alleged “criticism”. And that is usually the case, especially if you look at the political parties Condell supports. Prima facie evidence for racism. Ever hear of dog whistles? They are heard loud and clear.

Because the only people who complain are racists, bigots, islamophobes, and misogynists, trying to pretend they aren’t bigots of some form. It’s part of their MO.

Wait, so first it’s pedantry and now it’s masked racism? Is it really that hard to believe I’m sincere in my comments and adhere to what is written in there, instead of alleged implications? Islamophobia has been mentioned before, as a legit word, and it would be far more appropiate now.

I really don’t know of any feminists who think anything on that list is at all acceptable.

I’m pretty sure you could dig up some self-described feminists who defend some forms of FGM and the burqah as legitimate cultural practices. In any case, that’s just a nit-pick, not really relevant to the main point, which is that the vast majority of feminists condemn it, and anyway, even if a few don’t, that doesn’t excuse Condell’s bigotry.

I confess, I liked his early anti-religious rants, but as he became steadily more irate about the brown hordes invading Britain, I tuned him out

Indeed, that’s exactly what happened with me. Once upon a time, I would eagerly await every single YouTube video, thinking, “Wow, this guy isn’t really fair, but he’s HILARIOUS!” Then some bits started to creep in that made me say, “Hey, that seems to be bordering on racist… well, it’s sort of a form of comedy, I guess maybe part of the point is to take everything too far. That fell flat for me, but maybe the next video will be better.” Then it wasn’t, and then I missed a couple, and then the next one I watched was even worse, and that’s been it.

Sad, really. I was even willing to look the other way on a couple of racist rants, thinking that it was just a case of Condell’s ascerbic form of comedy misfiring in a very bad and uncomfortable way. But all he does these days are racist rants. Sad and disgusting.

PZ, come on! He’s not anti-brown people. He’s trying to stand up for our Western values where women are not forced into marriages, where teenage girls aren’t removed form their homes and thrust into some stranger’s house as his live-in slave, where women aren’t stoned to death for getting raped. There is nothing wrong with our Western values in comparison to the primitive, religion-soaked tripe that the Muslims are dragging into Europe.

. . .
And, as must be done in every single damn thread about this topic:
If you can’t, in your mind, substitute ‘bigot’ for every reference of ‘racist’, than please go through your self-assessment and substitute ‘stupid’ for every reference of ‘smart’.

I’ve never found Condell that funny, but now I’ve changed my mind. In order to show how he’s not a racist, Pat is retweeting comments from all of his non-white supporters. See, Pat’s not racist he’s got non-white friends……….online. A funny man is Condell.

‘Despite what the Palestinian public-relations industry, i.e. the western media might tell you, this isn’t about territory, and it isn’t about justice or human rights, because Arab societies don’t know the meanings of those words.’

Condell, The great Palestinian lie (October 6, 2011; from YouTube)

The Civilized meanings of those words:

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

It’s not racism in that he doesn’t like the things that Islam does. It’s racism because his arguments are aimed at an entire group of people who’s membership to him is determined by colour of skin and is portrayed as a monolith.

The ultimate joke is Islam is fucked up because we treated it as a monolith where the people on top are the flag burning ululating lunatics rather than the sane, calm and measured people. If we keep speaking to the pyromaniac then other Muslims think the only way to get heard is to be the pyromaniac.

OK, I get it. PZ is angry about both heinous misogynistic acts such as genital mutilation and also angry about misogynistic comments. Being angry about one does not preclude being angry about the other. And saying something bad is not excused by finding someone who said or did something worse. I understand all of this. What I don’t understand is why misogyny has become such a major focus of this blog. Pharyngula used to be about promoting science and debunking pseudoscience. And about promoting critical thinking and debunking supernatural claims. What happened?

Daz says (111),

It improved.

Fuck off.

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I calmly point out that misogyny has become a major focus of this blog and ask why. I am told to, “Fuck off”.

sciencenotsuperstition,
One of the reasons I am an atheist–as opposed to simply agnostic–is because I have seen time and again the religious justify their own prejudices in terms of divine will. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, even going back to slavery–all have found justification in scripture.

If atheism is to have any claim to the more principled, higher ground that we all claim to covet, it must do better. It is not enough for atheists to simply proclaim there is no god. We have to extirpate all the poisons that belief in gods has injected into our culture. Our Christian friends have failed by their own criteria by producing racist, sexist, homophobic and hateful fruit. We have to do better, and our ultimate success or failure will be judged precisely by how we appeal to the sensibilities of those repressed from time immemorial by the theists. PZ is right, atheism has to be about more than simply not believing in gods.

Many of the people who decry Islam/ people with melanin on the grounds of their oppression of women in a manner that is frankly racist are rarely active in feminist circles – they’re not agitating for abortion/contraception access, they’re not protesting sexual harassment or rape (except when it’s about dark boogeymen abducting white virgins), they’re not advocating for an end to pay disparities.

There’s another message the Condells and Dawkinses are pushing, not terribly subtly either. It’s a threat. “See those guys over there? They’ll do terrible things to you. If you say one word, ONE CRITICAL WORD about us you’re on their side. And what they’ll do to you just doesn’t bear thinking about. We cranky old White Men are all that stands between you and murderous raping hordes of muds. So shut up and make me a sammich.”

Also, the point about “Dog Whistle” words is well taken. My Dad recently traveled to the UK and went to a Rotary meeting. During lunch it came up that he was Jewish. The conversation shifted. He got questions along the lines of was it true that “The Hebrews” still “practiced animal sacrifice” and was he in banking.

You can choose not to read Pharyngula if you desire. This is PZ’s blog, and therefore the stuff written here is the stuff that PZ is interested in. There are perhaps millions of blogs out there, and any number of them can measure up to what you wish to read.

In fact, if you’re looking for the “old” Pharyngula whatever that means, go to SciBlogs, cause it’s still there, and a lot of the social justice type posts aren’t.

SC at #110. Long ago, I came to the conclusion that Winston Churchill was a war mongering racist. The reason why he saw Hitler as a threat was because Churchill saw Hitler as an extreme version of himself leading a rival would be empire.

Inspiration leader of democratic, my fucking ass.

Hitler never would have apologized for the murder of the Jews and the conquering of Slavic land end the murder and enslavement of the Slavs because I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

Oh, wait, the wrong the Nazis did was to treat Europe like how the major (and minor) powers of Europe treated the rest of the world. That is, turning other civilizations into colonies.

Well, thruth be told, in most (all?) of those cases such sentiments would have been perfectly reasonable. It’s not like the muslims that Condell abhors are taking over as the ruling class or anything, so the comparison seems to limp somewhat.

And that matters how? Condell says ‘muslim’ to mean ‘african, arabian, or southwest asian follower of islam’, same as the rest of you racist asshats. You couldn’t possibly be more clear about your focus; ffs, you idiots think FGM is some speshul Muslim thing. I’ve never heard you say things about how Christianity is doing it, as an aggregate – this despite the fact that it’s primarily an east african practice, practiced as much by the Christians in the region as the muslims.

He’s a rampant islamofobe, I’m unconvinced that he’s just a straight up racist. Rampant islamophobe is enough though, isn’t it? And no, I’m not using “islamophobe” in some watered out form that includes any and all critisisms of islam. I believe Pat Condell suffers from deep set irrational fear and/or hatred of islam, how else does one explain his fixation on this topic in recent years?

No, but there is such a thing as context. In the linked video, Pat Condell says:

Sweden has been so “enriched” by Islamic immigration that its women statistically have a 25% chance of being raped in their lifetime.

Notice he doesn’t mention the influence of Islam, or anything about conversions. He is using anti-immigration rhetoric, which tells us he has issues with foreigners & others, more than he does with certain ideology.

Of course, we’ve never heard of a racist justifying their bigotry by saying, “Oh, it’s not their race. It’s culture. The poor dears can’t help themselves, really.” Why that would be totally novel, wouldn’t it? If you prefer bigoted arsehole to racist arsehole, I’d be fine with the switch.

He is categorizing a billion people as hating women, Walter, merely on the basis of their having said,
“There is no god but god.” Why restrict his opposition to Islam? Why not oppose conservative xtians as well? Hell, why not simply become active in women’s causes.

What positive goal is he espousing–women’s equality? Nope. Anti-immigration. Yup!

Do you realize how fucking bigoted it is to pretend these things aren’t done by white christians? Well, with hte exception of FGM… which is done just as much by the Christians in the areas it’s practiced in.

Norway and Sweden used to be among the safest for women. Now they’re best known for their high levels of Islamic immigrant rape that nobody in power wants to acknowledge or do anything about that because that would be racist.

Fuck, it’s right fucking in front of you. Sweden, at least, doesn’t have more rape because of teh muslin. The rates are higher than the fucking countries they’re importing from, allegedly. Sweden’s high rate is more likely because of a greater recognition of what constitutes rape, and a greater willingness to report rape. But no, keep insisting, asshat. It’s only in the fucking OP.

Can we move on from arguing with Mr. Dictionary here? Does it really matter whether Condell is called a racist or a bigot? His behaviour is equally repellent in either case.

It does, but not very much – I grow weary of allowing racists to define ‘racism’ as anything but ‘supports the marginalization of people based on their race’.

Call it racism, call it xenophobia, call it Islamophobia, call it bigotry: I don’t fucking care.

What is your opinion of someone who categorizes millions of people on the basis of a shared religion? What is your opinion of someone who blatantly lies about rape statistics in order to bolster that argument, yet claims to be practising feminism? What is your opinion regarding what the man said?

I’m pretty sure you could dig up some self-described feminists who defend some forms of FGM and the burqah as legitimate cultural practices

You’re also going to find a thankfully high number of feminists who’ll say that forcing adult women to stop wearing the burqa in order to “free them whether they like it or nor” is neither right nor even well meaning.
And of course they’ll get bashed by racists fuckers for being too complacent toward the Eviiiiiiils of the Moosleem Kultur“: after all: fascist bullies have always seen empathy as a weakness, why, one cynical mind might even concludes that the far-right exists only to give sociopaths a way to disguise they contempt toward the rest of Humankind as some principled ideological position.

***

He got questions along the lines of was it true that “The Hebrews” still “practiced animal sacrifice” and was he in banking

You know the funniest thing: my mother was in the Rotary: the organization is filled with rich people who don’t give much of a fuck about its charities but are here to do some networking, and as a result, banks send their employees to the Rotary to fish out wealthy customers.
So the Rotary is filled with bankers… and yet some of its members are still looking out for Jews.

Walter, according to the Koran, one is a Muslim if just one time one says with sincerity, “There is no god but God.” There are equally misogynistic sentiments in the Bibble, in most other holy texts, in countless other cultural documents, in fact everywhere you look. If you oppose sexism and misogyny, oppose them. If you are opposing religious bigotry, oppose it wherever you find it. You needn’t single out any group–there’s plenty of blame to go around.

All the evidence and explanation you have asked for is already present in this comment thread. Kindly read the whole thread, digest the information, and get a clue.

If you still have questions after reading all the comments, feel free to ask them, but as we can’t really add simple diagrams to our comments, I doubt we can accommodate for your lack of reading comprehension.

2 seconds Googling, and yep, walterbyrd seems to be a hardcore Pat fanboy and apologist. He also posted this funny Southpark songtext in the comments section of a Pat video:

I heard there is no Christmas
In the silly Middle East
No trees, no snow, no Santa Claus
They have different religious beliefs
They believe in Muhammad
And not in our holiday
And so every December
I go to the Middle East and say…
“Hey there Mr. Muslim
Merry fucking Christmas
Put down that book the Koran
And hear some holiday wishes.
In case you haven’t noticed
It’s Jesus’s birthday.
So get off your heathen Muslim ass
and fucking celebrate.

You keep making the claim that he is only attacking the ideology, and not the people, but this is false. He has repeatedly stated that he’s against the immigration of Muslims to European countries. You do understand that immigrants are people right?

I can see you’ve never been in Rural America. About half the list is in full force here. The other half is either not really muslim (If a muslim man kills a woman, regardless of circumstances, it’s an ‘honor killing’, for instance, whereas a white dude can pretty much never be called that anymore. FGM isn’t really done at all in, for instance, Muslim Turkey, but is in full force in Christian areas in East Africa), only in partial force here, (Although truthfully, I’ve never heard of ‘organized gang rape’ as if it’s a thing with a formal organization, even in predominantly muslim countries; I *have* heard of impromptu gangs forming though – Christian Uganda is totes on board with corrective rape, as are large parts of the USian populace)

Fuck, do you not see the inherent problem in saying “little girls are forced to dress like nuns” is ignoring jackassery your culture’s religion causes?

BTW: Pat is not a Christian, and is also critical of Christianity.

Nominally. He excuses it from these flaws – just as he excuses where atheists prop up sexism, and try to turn atheism to do so.

They are not laws in predominately Christian nation.

Uh, have you heard of Uganda? Do know where they got so much strength for their religious extremism? We exported it from America. This isn’t really a secret.

Oh, really? Misogyny is not part of Christianity. If you say so. And of course when Christians are in charge of the government as they were in, oh, say Puritan New England or Medieval Europe, there is no sexism at all. Of course not.

Norway and Sweden used to be among the safest for women. Now they’re best known for their high levels of Islamic immigrant rape that nobody in power wants to acknowledge or do anything about that because that would be racist.

He is saying, very plainly, that what he is advocating would be considered racist by some. Yes, he is being snarky about it, but it shows that his own concept of the issue involves race.

Do you really think the islamic boogeymen in his Scandinavian rape epidemic fantasy are white?

Does the bible condone wife beating? Does the bible say that a woman is only half as intelligent as a man?

Yeah, it does. Women aren’t people in the bible. They’re the husband’s property. Where do you think marital rape came from in Western culture?

Does Christianity condone child brides

Do you not even know medieval european history? ofc not.

or female genital mutilation

Yeah, in east africa, which is where muslims do it. You’re not reading, are you?

or punishing woman for the crime of being raped?

You’re seriously asking a Meriken this, aren’t you?

In any case, we are way off my original point: if cannot tell me, specifically, what Pat said that is racist, then you would be a filthy liar to call Pat a racist.

Yeah, everything I quoted from the OP is a good place to start. It’s all racist bullshit. Fuck, you even had his focus on anti-immigration bolded for you and you ignore it. If we existed in a pretend world where Pat didn’t know what he was saying when he said it, and sincerely only opposed Islam as an ideology, it would still be racist to say what he said, because what he said will not be interpreted to only mean the ideology by xenophobic asshats who hate the people who follow it. It is racist to say shit that marginalizes people based on their race – even if you don’t intend to do so. But he did intend to, so that’s fucking irrelevant.

Actually, Walter-boy, I was the one who acquainted YOU with the criteria the Koran cites for being a Muslim.

Child marriage was common in Christendom before the Enlightenment. FGM is mentioned nowhere in the Koran, and is practiced in much of Subsaharan Africa by Xtians, animists… as well as Muslims. It was practices long before the Koran. Nowhere does the Koran say a woman should be punished for being raped. And the attitudes expressed in the Bibble are distinctly…unenlightened. Why single out a billion people for a disease suffered by all humanity. Is it because you fear Muslims?

Because the Islamic ideology is far more misogynistic than xitians. If you don’t know that, then you are not familiar with Islamic ideology.

Citation needed.

These things are not accepted in Christianity. They are not laws in predominately Christian nation. These things are not part of the Christian religion. That is the difference.

Citation needed.

Line up the Bible (OT and NT), the Koran/Hadiths, the Sutras, and the writings of a dozen other religions do some basic stuff like replacing the specific deity/prophet’s name/title with a placeholder and the you’d be hard pressed to find a coherent difference on the misogyny front. Seriously.

If you don’t realize that, you aren’t paying attention.

Also:

Wrong. Look up the statistics. The overwhelming number of aggravated rapes are done by Muslim men.

Most women in Sweden – like most women everywhere – are raped by their husbands, boyfriends, partners, people-they-went-on-a-date-with, relatives, and various other men they know. A minority of rapes are perpetrated by strangers. A minority.

Does the bible condone wife beating? Does the bible say that a woman is only half as intelligent as a man?

Does Christianity condone child brides, or female genital mutilation, or punishing woman for the crime of being raped?

More or less yes to all of the above, except funnily enough no for female genital mutilation, which is also nowhere condoned in Islamic holy books. But you have seemed to have disregard this point I already made above. How convenient.

In any case, we are way off my original point: if cannot tell me, specifically, what Pat said that is racist, then you would be a filthy liar to call Pat a racist.

Is has been pointed out enough. Just because you chose to put your fingers in your ears and shout ‘lalala’ at the top of your lungs doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You are a fucking joke.

Not as far as I know, but only because the various writers of the Bible weren’t conversant enough with numbers to come up with that exact a fraction. Certainly Genesis states that women are inferior and to be ruled by men. And Paul was all for keeping women in their place. Just to name the two that come to my mind without effort.

Does Christianity condone child brides, or female genital mutilation, or punishing woman for the crime of being raped?

Yep to child brides. Incidentally, US law also condones child brides: 13 year olds can marry in some jurisdictions. FGM I’m not sure about, I must admit. But the Bible goes into great detail about how a woman who is raped must marry her rapist if he pays her family for her. And if she didn’t yell loudly enough during the rape, she can be stoned along with her attacker.

Maybe you ought to read the Bible before asking this sort of question next time.

OK, I get it. PZ is angry about both heinous misogynistic acts such as genital mutilation and also angry about misogynistic comments. Being angry about one does not preclude being angry about the other. And saying something bad is not excused by finding someone who said or did something worse. I understand all of this. What I don’t understand is why misogyny has become such a major focus of this blog. Pharyngula used to be about promoting science and debunking pseudoscience. And about promoting critical thinking and debunking supernatural claims. What happened?

PZ said (113).

It still is! Racism and sexism are pseudoscientific, they need to be addressed critically, and debunked as false.
The only thing that’s happened is that I’m goring your sacred cow.

What? Your first two sentences provide your answer to my question. But the third is absurd. I simply asked why the focus of Pharyngula has changed. The fact that I asked this question gives you sufficient evidence to conclude that I am a racist or a sexist or both? Really?

A_Ray said (116),

sciencenotsuperstition,
One of the reasons I am an atheist–as opposed to simply agnostic–is because I have seen time and again the religious justify their own prejudices in terms of divine will. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, even going back to slavery–all have found justification in scripture…

Thank you A_Ray. Your response to my question was a reasoned attempt to explain why Pharyngula is now filled with discussions about misogyny. Most people have simply told me to go away or fuck off.

Kevin said (120)

@sciencenotsuperstition:
You can choose not to read Pharyngula if you desire. This is PZ’s blog, and therefore the stuff written here is the stuff that PZ is interested in. There are perhaps millions of blogs out there, and any number of them can measure up to what you wish to read.

Kevin, thank you. That was kinder than Daz (comment 111) who was so offended by my question that he or she told me to fuck off.

walterbyrd, the point you are missing with me is this; what Pat Condell is saying is resonating with people who are flat out racists, people who do see dark skin and assumes that there is an Islamic terrorists.

Also, it is too bad that your claim that Pat is not being racist is disproved by his argument about Norway and Sweden being “Islamicized” by immigrants. Stand for those great “Western” values, you know, the white man’s burden.

Wrong. Look up the statistics. The overwhelming number of aggravated rapes are done by Muslim men.

That was almost clever, for a racist fuckwit. That’s actually true – ‘aggravated’ means ‘stranger rape’. The overwhelming majority of rape in Sweden, however, is acquaintance rape – not ‘Aggravated’ rape. So you know, nice try, but try finding a feminist who isn’t also an anti-racist.

So, Walter, let’s see. You’ve got the old “It’s not race, it’s culture” trope. What’s next? You gonna tell us that some of Pat’s best friends are black/brown? Or that he even allows them to use his very own toilet?

Incidence of aggravated rape in Scandinavian countries is sky rocketing.

Reporting of rape is skyrocketing in Sweden. This is because it is easy to report a rape and it will get taken seriously. When the same methodology is used to determine the incidence of rape in various countries, including Sweden (i.e. victim surveys), the rate is about the same for Sweden and other northern European countries.

And they know the rapes are being committed my Muslim men.

Who are they and how do “they” know? Produce some data to support your claim if you want it to be taken seriously.

I said female genital mutilation is accepted by Muslims, but not Christians.

Except, of course, where it is. Like among the Christian Copts in Egypt and Sudan. Or the anamists in central Africa. Or 19th century Christians in Europe and the US seeking to stop women from masturbating. Sorry, your statement is true neither historically nor currently.

I never said it was. I said female genital mutilation is accepted by Muslims, but not Christians.

Here is a UNICEF report that notes, among other things, that 74% of Ethiopian women have been subjected to FGM. Ethiopia, for the record, is 62.8% Christian. Notice something about that math? It means that Christian women in Ethiopia are being subjected to FGM.

Take a peek at a map of where FGM is done. You’ll notice that most FGM is done in countries in northeastern Africa. Dig down through the numbers, and you’ll note that the rates in multi-confessional countries are about even between religions – that is, if a country is inhabited by Muslims and Christians, Muslim and Christian girls are cut at equivalent rates.

Then that is their problem. If I say the sky is blue, and you take that to mean the sky is pink, you got it wrong, not me.

Doesn’t work that way. If you sincerely don’t want to propogate racist bullshit, it is on you to take a measure of diligence to prevent it from being transmitted. If, and this is pure fantasy, Condell didn’t mean those things, it could be possible that he was unintentionally racist, sure. But it’d still be racist.

Of course, in the real world, Condell’s intentionally fucking using these dogwhistles, you fucking idiot.

The imam of the village mosque started off the dialogue from a religious point of view. “I would like to inform you that Islam does not allow female genital mutilation and cutting,” he said. “As Muslims, when our religion says you have to abandon this practice, you have to completely abandon it. Otherwise you are not a true believer.”

I think all of that is old testament. I do not think modern Christians condone any of that.

Ah, so Christians, even so-called Bible-believing Christians, are fine because they obey obey this bit of their book but not that, yet we’re not supposed to believe that any Muslims anywhere are equally capable of rationalising a more humane reading of their book. Why is that, Walter? Are Muslims less capable of empathy than Christians?

Yet you accuse of Condell of making those racist statements, which means you are just a bunch of filthy liars.

Are you really so obtuse and literal that you can’t conceive of a cultural trait being used as a marker to identify an ethnic group? Are you completely unaware that it is in part by means of such markers that oppressive majorities police the boundaries of their socially constructed racial categories in the first place?

You would agree that to call somebody a racist, without being able to provide any evidence of that person actually being a racist; would make you a filthy liar, and libelist, wouldn’t you?

And anybody who isn’t themselves defending racism would fail to acknowledge the dog whistles used by Pat, to pretend they aren’t racist, while allowing those “in the know” to understand they condone racism and bigotry? It isn’t hard to tell the closet racists. They give themselves away, but “politer” than was the case fifty years ago, hiding behind a false façade of sounding innocuous.

But CJO! It is to be allowed because Pat Condell and walterbyrd are attemting to defend the fruit of Western Culture, the finest achievement of humanity. (We will ignore the fact that Western Culture is dog whistle for White.)

I wonder why it is that I imagine Mr. Byrd licking his spittle-flecked lips every time he says “filthy liars”?

We get it, Walter. You think Pat is the New Jesus for atheist people, and can do no wrong. We get it. Can we get on with life, now, or are you going to continue completely monopolizing the thread to get more chances to spit out “FILTHY FILTHY LYING DIRTY WHORES I’LL GET YOU YOU FILTHY FILTHY FILTHY- wait here, I’ll be back in five minutes – FILTHY DIRTY WHORE LIARS WHO LOVE ISLAM MORE THAN THEIR OWN HAIRY LEGS FILTHY FILTHY FILTHY- wait, i’ll be back in five…”

We get it. Can we move on, now, from your amazing solipsistic focus on how dirty we liars are?

And Christians don’t consider the old testament as part of their holy book? News to me. And to most Christians, I would imagine. But no, Christians do definitely follow the old testament. How else could they condemn gay men if they dropped the single, ambiguous condemnation of it in the OT?

Keep tap dancing. Keep trying to say that Pat has made racist remarks, while admitting that Pat has not made racist remarks.

You soooo desperately want to call everybody who does not conform to your narrow minded PC stubbornness, a “racist.” That you are willing to put words in a person’s mouth, and condemn somebody for something that person never said.

The first line in this post claims Pat “became steadily more irate about the brown hordes . . .”

Never mind that Pat never said that. Never mind that Pat never refereed to “brown hordes” in any of his videos. Let’s accuse Pat of saying that anyway, and then start tap dancing when somebody calls you on your obvious lies.

Sorry Walter, the only thing you have proved is that you are a defender of blatant racism, and will do and say anything to avoid having the word racist used. Just like the MRA fuckwits who, when the word rape isn’t used, will describe behavior that is rape.

Walter, your “demands for evidence” were all met above. You just won’t recognize the truth about your hero, who you think is a brave heart, fighting the good fight. Instead of bigot spreading bullshit and hate.

You soooo desperately want to call everybody who does not conform to your narrow minded PC stubbornness, a “racist.”

I call all behavior that denigrates or demeans based on race racist – including my own, and that of people I respect.

Never mind that Pat never refereed to “brown hordes” in any of his videos.

For a dude so hung up on exact wording, you’re pretty quick to throw out “liar” (which requires you to knowingly lie, not fail to substantiate claims to walterbyrd’s specifications) and “Libelist” (Nearly impossible to do to a public figure)

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. –1 Corinthians 6:9-10

We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers — and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine. –1 Timothy 1:9-10:

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. –Romans 1:26-27

Walter, your sources are, shall we say, a little bit biased? They’re about as reliable as the tobacco industry’s reports on whether cigarettes are linked to lung cancer or not. Find a reliable source or admit you’re full of it.

Cite a *racist* comment made by Pat. If you can’t then, face reality, you are just a filthy liar.

And what part of DOG WHISTLE don’t you understand liar and bullshitter? Once you understand that concept, Pat’s racism is blatant. You are certainly apologizing for a clear racist. Makes me suspicious of your real feelings, as you do sound like you agree with racist sayings and policies.

Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, or social affiliation.

Get this through your thick skull, you fucking moron: it is a common practice of racist agitators in these latter days when overt prejudice is more socially unacceptable than in times past to use various cultural, geographical, and social markers to identify the ethnic populations they wish to denigrate. So common that it is an easily identifiable tactic. You’re not fooling anyone, except possibly yourself. If you’re fooling yourself, stop. (Although I realize the ease of this activity must make it seductively attractive. Stop it nevertheless.)

“Race is a classification system used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, or social affiliation.” (emphasis added)

I. A group of people, animals, or plants, connected by common descent or origin.
In its widest sense the term includes all descendants from an original stock, but may also be limited to a single line of descent or to the group as it exists at a particular period.
a. A group of people belonging to the same family and descended from a common ancestor; a house, family, kindred. Cf. kin n.1 1a.
b. A tribe, nation, or people, regarded as of common stock. In early use freq. with modifying adjective, as British race, Roman race, etc.
c. A group of several tribes or peoples, regarded as forming a distinct ethnic set.

24 September 2013 at 12:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Here’s other things Christianity condones:
Killing women found not to be virgins on their wedding nights.
Child sacrifice.
Rape of captured women by soldiers.
Infanticide.

Do you need me to cite chapter and verse for each?

Walterbyrd said (197).

I think all of that is old testament. I do not think modern Christians condone any of that.

Father God not only condoned the killing of women and children, he ordered it! He also instructed His warriors to rape surviving virgins. Please read your Bible. Are Jesus and Father God not the same God? Are there two Gods? And is God not unchangable? Yes, the Old Testament is a major part of the current Christian Bible. In the New Testament Jesus specifically said he did not come to change the law (Old Testament). Do you also ignore the ten commmandments? Or do you just ignore the certain parts of the Old Testament?

So don’t thank God. Thank modern civilized men and women in most nations for coming up with secular laws that keep people from following barbaric Biblical and Koranic laws.

I never said it was. I said female genital mutilation is accepted by Muslims, but not Christians.

esteleth

Here is a UNICEF report that notes, among other things, that 74% of Ethiopian women have been subjected to FGM. Ethiopia, for the record, is 62.8% Christian. Notice something about that math? It means that Christian women in Ethiopia are being subjected to FGM.

Care to comment walter or are you going to ignore ALL the points raised against you?

race, the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioral differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century refuted the existence of biogenetically distinct races, and scholars now argue that “races” are cultural interventions reflecting specific attitudes and beliefs that were imposed on different populations in the wake of western European conquests beginning in the 15th century….

Add complete historical blindness to Walter’s now extensive catalog of of deficiencies. In the late 19th c./early 20th, that particular cultural marker was used precisely to identify the least “desirable” immigrants to this country, the Irish and Southern European/Mediterranean people, particularly Italian. “Papist” has a long history of being used in just this way.

Please just go back to YouTube where your talents can be properly appreciated. This stupid game started out tiresome, and it has not improved.

India and Indonesia make some 400 million Muslims on their own. If the majority of Muslims isn’t Asian, then it’s probably African.

What on earth makes you suppose that I’m not already aware of this fact, or that it’s at all relevant?

Aren’t you doing the same by assuming any critique of Islam is racism?

Not at all; As I initially pointed out, your argument here is one that completely ignores context. Condell is repeating propaganda invented by groups like the UKIP, which are flagrantly racist. Already mentioned are attacks on Sikhs and other non-Muslims who have an appearance which racists perceive as Arab accompanied by anti-Muslim rhetoric. Dearborn, Michigan is a standard go-to for the American variety when they sheriek about ‘creeping shariah’ and similar Islamophobbic blithering because of the fact that 41% of the population of Dearborn is of Arabic ancestry. This despite the fact that the lmajority of said persons are Christians of Lebanese extraction. Thus, as noted, the only reasonable conclusion is that ethnic bigotry (which, combined with entrenched privilege, constitutes…oh, what’s that word? Oh, right, it’s racism….)

anuran #118

They’ll do terrible things to you. If you say one word, ONE CRITICAL WORD about us you’re on their side.

This is highly characteristic of authoritarians; there are only two sides, the one they’re on and the side of total evil and depravity, and everyone who’s not on their side is part of the same other side, and therefore are all equivalent and allied.

walterbyrd #119

Please cite anything Pat Condell said that is racist.

When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. When you base your arguments on racist propaganda, you get called a racist.

If you cannot do that, then please cite anything Pat said that is bigoted, or incorrect.

Read the thread.

I think that to call a person a “racist” without being able to provide any evidence, is an extremely scummy thing to do, wouldn’t you agree?

This is a riot. The walterbyrd types act just like rape apologists. Talk about racism without mentioning the magic words, and they will confess to all sorts of detestable things, but nail the race rhetoric down and watch as they do mental calisthenics to avoid the label.

Pat is criticizing the “ideology” of Islam by invoking hate against a specific subset of immigrants, using rhetoric that matches racist dogwhistles word for word and advocating for the same things racists do – but don’t you dare call him a racist!

Pick nits if you want, but I do not see wide spread acceptance of practices like wife beating, child brides, female genital mutilation, separate laws for men and women, honor killings, and so on among modern Christians.

It may be that some backwards tribe in Ethiopia still believes in some of that stuff, in spite of calling themselves Christian. But come on now, let’s not make any false equivalences here. We both know that brazen, outrageous, misogyny is widespread, and mostly legal, in Muslim nations.

Want to criticize Christianity? Go ahead. But, it does not change anything about Islam. Islam is still extremely misogynistic, even if there are a very few Christians in the world who still practice that ancient stuff.

Really, do you not see the irony is so-called feminists defending the most brazenly misogynistic ideology on earth?

We’re not. Moreover, it wouldn’t even be relevant if we were for some stupid reason doing that. Because, you see, Condell isn’t attacking it in the first place. Not, anyway, on terms that defending it as an ideology would counteract. Because his target is immigrants to Europe from predominantly Muslim countries. For the umpteenth time, the religion here is just a marker and a slightly more socially acceptable way to express regressive and bigoted attitudes.

walterbyrd, your bias is showing for everyone willing to see: If it comes to Christians, then you take the narrowest possible notion of Christianity: even if a practice like FGM exists in a majority-Christian country, you just call it ‘not-christian’, and be done with it. When it comes to Islam, then suddenly those Islamists living in that same-exact-fucking country and performing FGM are a stand-in for the whole group, and every person of Islam faith is tarred with the same brush, and FGM becomes ‘something Islamists do’.

Be gone allready, you are tiresome and a bigot, and totally uneducatable.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

do you not see the irony is so-called feminists defending the most brazenly misogynistic ideology on earth?

but, but, but, you also said:

You would agree that to call somebody a racist, without being able to provide any evidence of that person actually being a racist; would make you a filthy liar, and libelist, wouldn’t you?

And so when Pat said that feminists generally (not feminists in the sense of at least two individuals, whether or not they know each other, that could be described as feminists whether or not on the same criteria):

Is that respecting all obscure tribes? So obscure tribes that practice both Islam and female genital mutilation are also irrelevant to assessing Islam, correct?

And what about male genital mutilation and Judaism? In my personal experience, it’s not restricted to minor “tribes” of Jews, and avoiding the bris is controversial even in the far left shuls I’ve attended.

Friendly piece of advice: by constantly making assertions without providing evidence, you are just providing support for the people who are arguing against you.

At this point, I suspect anyone reading the thread who isn’t already a hardcore racist (and maybe some who are!) has come to the conclusion that you have no support for your argument. Whereas the people who are arguing that Condell is racist have soundly supported their position, largely in response to your posts.

So, if you want people to think you and Condell are racists, just keep posting! You’re doing a great job!

If that’s not what you want, then perhaps consider finding some evidence.

“Remember when Rick Santorum axe-murdered all those people and then buried the bodies in his back yard? That was terrible.”

“Uh… that never happened. That’s a complete fabrication.”

“Can you not see the irony in a bunch of so-called liberal atheists defending the most brazenly homophobic, bigoted Christian?”

You are, yourself, walter, making as clear a demonstration as could be that “Islam” here is being used solely to muddy the waters and provide a thin veneer of acceptibility to Condell’s bigoted and regressive diatribes.

Condell only sounds like a racist to morons who don’t know what the word even means

Which, I believe it has been firmly established, is a set of people that includes Walter Byrd. So apparently being a moron who doesn’t know what the word “racist” means isn’t a sufficient criterion for determining whether one’s assessment of Condell’s racism is accurate or not.

It may be that some backwards tribe in Ethiopia still believes in some of that stuff, in spite of calling themselves Christian.

So when Christians do it, it’s “in spite of calling themselves Christian.” On the other hand, when Muslims do it, it’s totally BECAUSE they’re Muslim – never mind that none of their holy works condone it and never mind that most of their leaders condemn it (I won’t say all, because I’m sure there are some Islamic leaders who condone it – just as there demonstrably are SOME Christian leaders who condone female genital mutilation as well as other things like putting gays to death.)

This is the typical rhetoric of someone who has “otherized”* a group – when someone from a group that they’re well acquainted with (like Christianity) does something horrific, it’s a terrible backwards exception. When the “other” guys do it, it’s common practice and “widespread across the Muslim world” and evidence of how truly corrupt and vile their ideology is.

You’ve interacted with a lot more Christians, and you know that a vast majority of them do not support female genital mutilation. But because you’re ignorant and haven’t actually interacted with many Muslims, you can assume that the anecdotes you’ve heard in the news represent the beliefs and actions of a majority of the Other.

*I’m sure there’s a better term than “otherized,” but it’s not coming to me at the moment

Despite what the Palestinian public-relations industry, i.e. the western media might tell you, this isn’t about territory, and it isn’t about justice or human rights, because Arab societies don’t know the meanings of those words.

He says that “Arab societies” — not “Muslim,” but “Arab” — don’t know the meanings of justice or human rights. So are you willing to admit that this is a racist statement, or am I a “filthy liar” too?

Actually, waltebyrd, the Quran never says women are half as intelligent as men. Nowhere. And it doesn’t in sunna or hadith either. If you bothered to read something on the subject that didn’t appear on Pam Geller’s site you’d know that the original requirement was for a woman to have an advocate speak for her in Court. Part of this was the nasty sexist Arabian Peninsula 8th century treatment of women. Part of it was because women weren’t supposed to speak up publicly. And part of it was because it was assumed a woman needed someone to see that her interests were looked out for.

And women do have rights under Sharia, under all five of the traditional schools of Muslim jurisprudence and even under the *spit* Wahabis. That puts Islam a good country mile ahead of Christendom through most of the last two thousand years. A wife had no legal existence apart from her husband. She could not own property in her own name. If she killed her husband it wasn’t generally murder under the law it was “petit treason” against her Natural Lord. The only reason we’ve seen progress at all in the last two hundred years was because of uppity feminists who didn’t sit down, shut up and do what their Betters, Rich Old White Men told them to do.

wife beating:Yes
child brides: Sure enough
female genital mutilation: Nope, as has been pointed out, that’s a cultural practice, not a religious one, and Mormonism isn’t widespread among cultures that practice it at present.
honor killings: Yup
and so on: Without details, I can’t really say, but they share a religious aversion to alcohol with Islam and several other strains christianity, notably Baptism. They also have explicit statements in their holy book that women are less worthy than men, should be dominated by men, etc. Not to mention some quite unpleasant things to say about unbelievers (and also people who aren’t white, although they try to downplay that in public these days).
Did you think you had some kind of point?

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Longer answer: Mormons believe in misogynistic violence. The exact expressions of misogynistic violence that are most common among mormons are almost certainly different than the exact expressions most common among muslims, just as the exact expressions among Yemeni muslims are different from the exact expressions of Singaporean muslims or Turkish muslims or Niger muslims.

Have you read any part of the Book of Mormon? The very first part of the actual content is a pair of statements of witnesses – both of which amount to, “Shut up, that’s why.” The patriarchal nature of Mormonism has been made clear over and over. Even the horrific violence against boys in certain Mormon communities is about trying to maintain ownership and control over the greatest possible numbers of women.

If you don’t know this, you know nothing at all about the relationship between Mormonism and sexism. Perhaps you should stop acting as if you do.

Walter @251: Your first link does not support your premise. It specifically blames issues other than immigration for the increase in the incidence of (reported) rape in Sweden. The next reports an anecdote. No one’s arguing that Islamic men can’t be sleazy rapists. Two links to EUTimes, a notoriously unreliable source. The link to the Norwegian paper led to the paper’s front page. In summary, one article that provided evidence against your thesis, four that did not add further information. Pathetic.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Here is a UNICEF report that notes, among other things, that 74% of Ethiopian women have been subjected to FGM. Ethiopia, for the record, is 62.8% Christian. Notice something about that math? It means that Christian women in Ethiopia are being subjected to FGM.

Take a peek at a map of where FGM is done. You’ll notice that most FGM is done in countries in northeastern Africa. Dig down through the numbers, and you’ll note that the rates in multi-confessional countries are about even between religions – that is, if a country is inhabited by Muslims and Christians, Muslim and Christian girls are cut at equivalent rates.

walterbyrd @2hundred and freaking 83:

It is not fair to compare what is done by a small tribe in Ethiopia, to what is wide spread across the Muslim world.

…So until all Western Christian-majority countries become small tribes with FGM rates comparable to those in Muslim-majority countries that walterbyrd thinks count as real countries and not something something tribal, racism is a social construct and there are no such things as stranger-in-the-bushes really-racist-racists. Buhwha?

Now, Iraq is a bit of an outlier and Indonesia more so, geographically speaking, but those other 29, are geographically connected. You can draw a line around all 29, gathering all of them and including no others. The countries are a mix of Muslim, Christian (both Copt, Catholic, and otherwise), Jewish and animist.

The authors also note that FGM is virtually unheard of in other countries – except amongst immigrant communities from the aforementioned countries.

They note that the practice of FGM – the rationale, the methods, the age at which it is practiced, who does it, etc – is about even across religious lines. They also note that there is excellent archaeological evidence of FGM being practiced long before any of the current religions came to the area (for example, an examination of Egyptian mummies reveals that most ancient Egyptian women had been cut).

This is not a religious practice. This is a cultural practice. And it is hardly “obscure” or practiced by “minor” tribes – we’re talking 70, 80, 90% of the population being cut.

Jews receive a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes – real ones, I mean, not the bullshit Peace one – because they’re at the top of sciences, medicine, technology – you name it. Wherever there’s progress in this world you’ll often find some Jew in there making all the difference. Israel today is a world technological leader alone in the Middle East like a diamond in a sea of mud.

But he’s totally praising the Jews, so that can’t be racism, right? (And that “sea of mud” thing is, I’m sure, an off-the-cuff metaphor into which very few implications should be read…)

But it is in the hadiths where the prophet is supposed to have counseled restraint in cutting

Narrated Umm Atiyyah al-Ansariyyah: A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to her: Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.

Someone somewhere along this thread says fgm is mostly practised in subsaharan Africa, not true. Egypt is one of the countries where it’s practised the most and including among the christian population.

I think all of that is old testament. I do not think modern Christians condone any of that.

Then what fuck is the use of quoting the Koran (or vaguely alluding to it without even a citation), if many Muslims likewise don’t condone a lot of shit it says?

I, personally, do not believe in either testament, and do not condemn gays, or anybody.

Not even murderers and rapists? Muslim terrorists? I mean, there’s nobody at all who you’d claim is immoral? (Except people who “lie” about Condell, I guess — I should probably at least assume that.)

But if you’re using it literally, in a religious sense of cursing them to be damned in hell, then this says effectively nothing. You might think they’re immoral, want take away all of their rights or whatever, even if you don’t believe in hell.

It seems you desperately want to misuse the word “racist.” Racist refers to *race* not religion. It is really just common sense.

I guess you’d have to tell us your “common sense” about what “race” refers to. You know, because we’re all out of common sense here.

[Since you haven’t learned to blockquote, because you’re too important for that, the first part is from zenlike]:

> When a Christian in Ethiopia does it, it is ‘an obscure tribe’, when an Islamist in Ethiopia does it, it’s ‘OMG Islam is the Evil and all 1 billion Islamists are exactly like that’.

No. Look up “false equivalence.”

It is not fair to compare what is done by a small tribe in Ethiopia, to what is wide spread across the Muslim world.

You know what isn’t fair? Claiming that whatever you’re talking about is “wide spread across the Muslim world,”* when there are over a billion Muslims all over the place. Unless this thing is identifying as a Muslim, it’s probably not as widespread as you’re claiming it is. Do me a favor and look up the statistics.

*What is that exactly? It’s a separate world? How far away is it from the hole you crawled out of?

I do not see wide spread acceptance of practices like wife beating, child brides, female genital mutilation, separate laws for men and women, honor killings, and so on among modern Christians.

Perhaps you ought to look. Ever heard of the Duggars? How about the Pearls, who advocate “breaking” a child with beatings starting in infancy? Their Christian belief in abusing children to get obedience has led to the deaths of numerous children. Or the Quiverful movement. Or maybe the link I posted earlier to PZ’s article about the Catholic priest’s statement that women should not go to college because it might make them “unfit” for marriage. Or the anti-choice movement that proudly and overtly advocates slavery, rape, and death for women who become pregnant–and that’s just their overt platform. The only way you could possibly not see that quite a number of “modern Christians” are as sexist as their Islamic counterparts is if you refuse to look.

I’m unsure if there is any credible, current, data from sweden. The 2005 report from BRÅ(in swedish, sadly) refers to cases 1997-2001 and is thus quite dated. It is true (according to the report) that the incidence of being a suspect in a rape case is particularly high in the group “foreign born”, of all the crime types listed – this is the one with the highest overrepresentation for this group.

It is of course self-evident that any bigotry in the police force (which is well documented) would feed directly into these types of statistics, so trying to draw conclusions from them is problematic at best.

The incidence of being susspect to a crime (any) is 2.5 times higher for foreign born compared to natives (person born from two swedish parents – which seems like a definition with recursion issues), however it is 5.3 times higher for people with low incomes, 5.7 times higher for people with low education and 6.1 times higher for people on welfare. Which lends more credence to socioeconomical issues rther than ethnicity as the primary cause of higher incidence of criminal activities.

You really think he honestly believes the shit coming out of his mouth?

I’m not sure people like him reflect on their thoughts with enough depth to form comprehensive beliefs.

(#260)

No, but it would make sense to say th at, for instance, turn-of-the-20th-century USA was racist against a lot of Catholic people and used their catholicism as a vector for that racism.

Noooo! That’s too complicated! Racism needs to be extremely simple so it suits my biases rather than describing reality!

~*~*~*~*~*~

Daz (#218)

That’s a new one on me. Mostly USian? I’ll know to avoid the word now, anyway, so thanks.

I don’t know how widespred it is. Just avoid it as a descriptor for people of color or things associated with PoC. While it’s not necessarily racist (there’s the genre “urban fiction,” for instance), it’s almost always a racist code word when it comes out of the mouth of a white person. Similar to “ethnic,” “ghetto” and “inner-city.”

~*~*~*~*~*~

On Mormon misogyny: The highest position for women in Mormon heaven is breeder of spirit babies to populate the planet where her hubby (whom she shares with other wives) is god. Muslim women get a much better deal when it comes to Paradise.

Agh, the damn line about immigrants causing a rape (and violence) epidemic in Sweden is just not true. Swedish crime statistics since 1990 just aren’t very useful for much of anything. If we look at victimization surveys (though those sadly don’t go back that far), the picture is quite different:http://itsbetterthanyours.blogspot.com/2013/09/quick-hit-rape-and-violence-in-sweden.html
Naturally, there are different measurement errors with victimization surveys, but I would confidently call them less problematic than for crime stats in Sweden (given law changes, introducing a new system in 1990, etc).

“Urban” is commonly used in the US as a euphemism for “black”. This can be pernicious (a racist dogwhistle) or it can be cynical PC* marketing-speak (“Urban Contemporary” radio “Urban Fiction” as a publishing category).

*Another dogwhistle, as can easily be seen here. However, my usage is appropriate: corporations using ephemisms to make the distinctions they want to make among market segments without being explicit about their demographic categories in order to alienate the minimum number of potential consumers of their product or service.

Pick nits if you want, but I do not see wide spread acceptance of practices like wife beating, child brides, female genital mutilation, separate laws for men and women, honor killings, and so on among modern Christians.

It may be that some backwards tribe in Ethiopia still believes in some of that stuff, in spite of calling themselves Christian. But come on now, let’s not make any false equivalences here. We both know that brazen, outrageous, misogyny is widespread, and mostly legal, in Muslim nations.

Want to criticize Christianity? Go ahead. But, it does not change anything about Islam. Islam is still extremely misogynistic, even if there are a very few Christians in the world who still practice that ancient stuff.

Walterbyrd,
I see your points and agree with most of what you say. What bothers me is that some Christians talk about savage Muslims and their savage Muslim Koran. They don’t seem to understand that the Bible also contains mountains of horrilbe things. When shown the savage Bible verses they say, “Oh, that’s the Old Testament, before Jesus, we don’t believe that any more.” I guess that means they no longer believe in the Ten Commandments since they are clearly archaic Old Testament rules.

White supremacy is racism, even if the exact group to which whites are being compared is unspecified. Propounding the superiority of Europeans qua Europeans is racism.

Who said otherwise?

You did, dumbass, repeatedly. e.g. “Nope. Pat never mentions race. Islam is not a race. Only liars and idiots think that.”

Condell is propounding the superiority of white Europeans to Muslims, and you are saying that since he isn’t specifying an unambiguously ethnic category that he absolutely no-way cannot be saying anything racist.

I swear, if we just let you babble on in the thread unopposed, all by yourself you’d be making our points for us.

Mano Singham just posted a handy example of what it actually looks like when one criticizes an ideology rather than a category of people. While his article focuses on a case particular to Islam in Pakistan, he talks mainly about how the ideology in question adversely affects Muslims. He also separates the ideology he’s criticizing from Islam when he censures it in the final line.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Me:
White supremacy is racism, even if the exact group to which whites are being compared is unspecified. Propounding the superiority of Europeans qua Europeans is racism.

Walter Byrd in 322:
Who said otherwise?

You did.

Walter Byrd in 291:

I am just asking for evidence, cite an exact quote, from Pat, that says anything derogatory about an entire race. If you cannot do that (and you can’t) then it is not fair to call Pat a racist.

So, liar, is it or is it not necessary to say something derogatory about an entire race in order to be racist. Please specify whether your comment in 322 was a deceptive weasel or whether your comment in 291 was a lie.

No offense, do you have some sort of mental defect? You are not making any sense at all.

I said:
> I am just asking for evidence, cite an exact quote, from Pat, that says anything derogatory about an entire race. If you cannot do that (and you can’t) then it is not fair to call Pat a racist.

You replied:
> So, liar, is it or is it not necessary to say something derogatory about an entire race in order to be racist.

Walter, you asked for examples of Pat making prejudicial statements about a race rather than a religion. I’ve provided them. Are you going to acknowledge that people are justified in calling Pat a racist, or are you just going to continue ignoring the evidence?

Walterbyrd: you’ve been stupid from the very beginning, and now you’re repetitive and offensive. You’ve been given many examples of Condell’s bigotry; you seem to be holding out for evidence that he said a racist slur. Most racists don’t, especially influential racists. They prefer to promote racist policies while letting their idiot lackeys run around defending them by demanding proof that they said some specific word.

You’re the idiot lackey. If you won’t respond to any of the substantive quotes you’ve been given, you should fuck off.

I am just saying: if you want to criticize Pat, why not criticize Pat for something Pat *actually* said, instead of making up straw man arguments, and criticizing Pat for something Pat never said. Why criticize Pat for all this “brown hordes” BS when you full well know that Pat never said anything of the sort.

If Pat is the brazen racist that you say he is, it should be very easy to find several brazenly racist quotes from Pat.

Yes Pat criticizes Islam, and a lot of other ideologies as well. So what? Is Islam beyond criticism for some reason?

All the misogynistic stuff that Pat criticized Islam for is true. Maybe some other backwards societies do the same, but that would not excuse Islam.

Please stop trying to play the race by screaming “racism” every time somebody does not agree with your point of view. Perfectly fine for you to have your own opinions, and to defend those opinions. By why not stop the witch hunt, McCarthyism, BS?

If you going to do something as extreme as accuse somebody of being a true racist, I think it is only fair that provide verifiable, irrefutable, evidence, to back up such a scathing accusation. Would you want any less for yourself?

I have seen no such evidence to back up your accusations, not even close, not be one helluva long shot.

Walter, blockquote (below the message box is the hyperlink instructions), and then present links to third party evidence to back up your claim. Expample: dog whistle politics/bigotry. You have no good will left due to your apologetic bullshitting, and your words aren’t worth the electrons used to post them.

So you’re saying racism is exactly as common as both witches and communists in high positions in the USA? You’re a clueless twit. The fucking fabric of your society is built on racist jackassery, just as mine is.

I am always baffled at how someone’s ability to read context and subtext regresses to a first grade level at certain topics.. I imagine these dipshits watching the Lion King and being all confused “wait…Scar said that SImba killed Mufasa. Simba killed Mufasa right?”

Let me clarify the above, Pat never literally said “brown hordes” as walter tries to claim anyone said here, but he sure as hell blows all the racist dog-whistles that say exactly the same thing but in veiled words:

Norway and Sweden used to be among the safest for women. Now they’re best known for their high levels of Islamic immigrant rape that nobody in power wants to acknowledge or do anything about that because that would be racist.

Consequently, Norwegian and Swedish women are no longer safe in their own countries, for cultural reasons. Indeed, Sweden has been so “enriched” by Islamic immigration that its women statistically have a 25% chance of being raped in their lifetime.

*snaps fingers* OMG there’s been something my mind has trying to connect and hasn’t until just down.

This same sort of bizzare selective illiteracy and “literalism” Is EXACTLY the sort of logic holocaust deniers use to absolve Hitler of guilt. He never actually offically literally ordered the execution they say and dismiss everything else because it’s not the literal words “I order genocide”

Bloody literal-minded assholes. Pat Condell has to use exactly my predetermined sequence of letters and words, or he isn’t a racist! Wrong. When he blandly announces that the EDL, a fucking racist organization, has a “healthy regard for human rights, democracy and the rule of law”, he’s being a racist. Indignantly announcing that he has never used the phrase “sand ni**er”, therefore he isn’t a racist, is irrelevant. When he cites the EDL’s own mission statement as evidence that they are not a racist organization, he is being as stupid as you are.

Since you choose to ignore every piece of evidence put before you to continue to harp on this nonsensical demand for a vague statement that would prove to you that he’s a racist, you can just fuck off for good now.

Nope. No color designation was used. So, that’s like totally not racist. Cause everybody knows that any time a public figure wants to make socially unacceptable insinuations about groups of people, they’re like scout’s honor totally obligated to use the coarsest, most obviously bigoted terms available. So unless I hear “brown” I like totally know: NOT RACIST.

Also: McCarthy BS and a bunch of other stuff I don’t understand but my other racis– er, my mates, they say it, and a lotta times the brow– er, the bad people like, shut up.

Word is racists have started using the term “zombie” for minority now specifically because it fools idiots like Walter.

You’re probably being too generous. He’s an idiot and a bigot, because I don’t think he’s fooled at all. (And he’s certainly not fooling anyone here.)

Has it been established to walterbyrd’s satisfaction that Pat Condell is a xenophobe? I almost don’t want to ask. After all, as far as I know, he’s never used the word ξένος, and he may not have been professionally diagnosed with any such phobia, so perhaps the (otherwise overwhelming) evidence is lacking.

tuibguy, sadly, over the years, Pat’s talking points have more or less entered the mainstream over here in Europe. First it was only the far-right parties, but when they were getting the votes, the (more) centre-right parties followed suit and started borrowing heavily from their far-right brothers to recoup their voters who were going over to the far-right side.

Not only are a lot of people defending Pat’s points, a lot of them are spouting them on a daily basis.

First, to clear the air a little, you have been presented with good evidence that the rape statistics in Sweden are not a result of immigrant Muslims. You have also been presented with good evidence that FGM is not a Islamic tradition but a regional tradition which predates the Islam.

Since you are no longer arguing these points, either you have accepted them, or you deny that the evidence is good enough to convince you.

Which is it?

If you have accepted that you might have been miss-informed about these two issues, it suggests that you are willing to listen to evidence which contradicts what Pat Condell said. If not, then there is no reason to discuss any of this with you further, as nothing we can say now will change your opinion.

So, if you have not accepted that you might be miss-informed about these two issues, my suggestion is that you stop posting for a few days and think about them. Do your own research, follow up on some of the suggestions made in this comment thread, and let the ideas sink in.

Because you are digging yourself into a hole.

Reading this thread, your arguments boil down to “Pat Condell can’t be a racist because Islam isn’t a race”, which is a cowardly excuse to justify denigrating a huge number of people, of various ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, languages, and even significant differences in religion.

Others upthread, have asked that you admit, even if you won’t admit that Condell is a racist, that Condell is a bigot. You have not replied to them.

Would you reply now? Is Pat Condell a bigot?

For he demonstrates the characteristics of one, he takes a single attribute of a class of people and says that because of that attribute they are destroying the culture he is comfortable with.

If the only difference in your mind between bigotry and racism is that the characteristic used by a racist to discriminate against is ethnicity, while a bigot might discriminate on any trait (i.e. racism is a sub-set of bigotry), then you have been arguing a losing battle. Because racism, as a term, has grown beyond mere ethnicity because ethnicity is a fluid notion. Someone with swarthy skin could be Arabic, or Italian, or Greek, or Egyptian, or Australian, American, or even British. So the boundaries of racism have been expanded to include more than just ethnicity.

Finally, I will re-iterate my suggestion that you leave this argument for awhile. It should be clear to you by now that your arguments are not going to persuade anyone here that Pat Condell is simply “saying what everyone thinks.” You are not obligated to get the last word in any on-line discussion, and I would submit that it is counterproductive to try to do so.

So, while I’m not telling you to go away (assuming that you continued tiresome repetition has not gotten you banned while I’ve been composing this treatise), I’m suggesting that you stop commenting.

You have to look at the real world impacts and ask whether you want Western countries to become more like Islamic countries.

“Tower Hamlets’ gay community has become a particular target of extremists. Homophobic crimes in the borough have risen by 80 per cent since 2007/8, and by 21 per cent over the last year, a period when there was a slight drop in London as a whole.

Last year, a mob of 30 young Muslims stormed a local gay pub, the George and Dragon, beating and abusing patrons. Many customers of the pub told The Sunday Telegraph that they have been attacked and harassed by local Muslim youths. In 2008 a 20-year-old student, Oli Hemsley, was left permanently paralysed after an attack by a group of young Muslims outside the pub. Only one of his assailants has been caught and jailed.

Even during meetings of the local council, prominent supporters of Tower Hamlets’ controversial directly-elected mayor, Lutfur Rahman – dropped by the Labour Party for his links to Islamic fundamentalism – have persistently targeted gay councillors with homophobic abuse and intimidation from the public gallery.”

You can see how ingrained culture is looking at the Pew Surveys reported by Razib Khan:

“Not all Muslim nations are Pakistan. It is in some ways an extreme case, but, it is also not inconsequential. ~10% of the world’s Muslim lives in Pakistan, and the Pakistani British community is large and robust. Earlier in the decade I had some expectations that Western Muslims in the Diaspora could shape the culture of Muslim majority nation-states, but the West has little cultural credibility in the first place, and if there’s influence I’d suspect it goes the other way now….

And predictably, Diasporic communities are considerably more liberal. Only 36 percent of British Muslims age 16-24 believe that apostates should be killed!”

China? 1.4% of all Muslims in the world live in China
Russia? 1.0% of all Muslims in the world live in Russia

All these countries are what people would call Islamic, but their ethnicity and culture vary widely.

And the people agitating to make Western nations more like what you believe Islamic nations are like are just as likely to be Christian as Islamic. Islam, as a religion, is no more toxic to a society than any other religion.

So why make things worse by importing people with such different cultural views?

Were you paying attention? The fact that they have “different” cultural views isn’t relevant, because people in French culture make it worse all by themselves. If anything, changing the existing culture is exactly what is needed, not preserving the culture as it is. Because latter is only about keeping it just for the sake of keeping it, not out of any concern for the moral consequences.

If you want European countries to be more Islamic perhaps instead you should move to an Islamic country?

That wouldn’t make European countries more Islamic. Have anything else, except for pointless advice?

ped·ant [ped-nt] Show IPA
noun
1.
a person who makes an excessive or inappropriate display of learning.
2.
a person who overemphasizes rules or minor details.
3.
a person who adheres rigidly to book knowledge without regard to common sense.
4.
Obsolete . a schoolmaster.
Origin:
1580–90; < Italian pedante teacher, pedant; apparently akin to pedagogue; see -ant

Everyone knows that values are valuables. And most valuables are expensive, delicate and fragile, and very hard to replace. Ergo just one or two house guests in your dinner party could rough house and accidentally knock over your Western Values and then before you know it your house turned into a mosque and your female family members spontaneously grow burqas. And that is why we never have people over any more, honey.

(I’m pretty sure my attempt at insane troll logic was still better logic than anything walterbyrd was able to muster. Sad.)

UGH. Unsubbing from RAT CONdell. I’ve got plenty of other GOOD secular media other than Pat Condell and “The Amazing Atheist” who use their secularism to advance bass-ackwards racist, misogynistic bigotry.

It’s really funny how many say Sikh and all are attacked mistaken for Muslims due to this “not racism”

It’s even “funnier” that a native-born Scotsman, as white as Prince Charles, got the same treatment because he had a beard. Guys, if you gotta be racists, at least try harder to tell races apart — otherwise racism becomes EVEN MORE POINTLESS THAN IT ALREADY IS.

It’s interesting how often white racists who fancy themselves scientific, technocratic, meritocratic, and the rest give themselves handles like “observer” and “witness”. It’s certainly not impossible to be a deep-dyed racist when you’re clearly aware of and comfortable with the reality of yourself as an individual shaped by culture on scales from family and friends through educational stratum to nation-state and multi-national milieu…but it’s harder in some ways. Rationalism can be a great way to avoid having to think about yourself as essentially physical, innately part of physical and social systems shaping your ideas and feelings in ways you cannot control or even fully know.

In reality, of course, we fleshy beings can do a fine job knowing lots about the world, including ourselves. But we don’t ever really get to the pure separation of subject and object that is inherent in all bigotry.

Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Kill all the male children and take the little girls as sex slaves? Appalling.

And look what the Koran has to say about women –

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

and

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands

And look what it says about how unbelievers should be treated!

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you … Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.

And you people are calling Condell racist for condemning this? Terrible. You should all be ashamed.

Still, there is no reason to condemn Islam unless one also condemns Xianity.

I think that was their point. Least, that’s the way I read it. That folks automatically see bad things in the Qur’an and generalise† to “all Muslims are evil” but don’t do the same for Christians, based on equivalent passages from the Bible.

Strange that PZ Myers would be so adamant that “I really don’t know of ANY feminists who think anything on that list is at all acceptable.” (Myers’ emphasis. The list quoted includes “genital mutilation”.)

In fact just last year Germaine Greer publicly defended female genital mutilation on national TV in Australia. The clip is on Youtube, and the question which elicits her response doesn’t start until the 6min 10sec mark – at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq1K3iMfH_U

Lee Petersen, I am shocked, shocked, I tell you, that PZ Myers doesn’t know what every single feminist in the world thinks about every subject he blogs about. Why, it’s almost as if the man were human!

Bullshit. Greer didn’t defend FGM. If you actually listen to her speak, she says it should be opposed socially, rather than with legal sanctions. That is NOT defending FGM. It is saying the law is not the correct instrument to stop it.

It’s prudent to do some research before abusing others.

Fuck you, you talking point spewing fuckhead. 5 minutes is all you had to spend validating your claim.

Incidentally, those of you who did not actually listen to her speak before castigating her for supporting FGM: shame on you. You know antifeminists fucking lie about what feminists say. Never fucking take their claims about what a feminist’s argument is on face value.

Well, that was an expected laugh. I didn’t realize this Myers character had his own cult of unquestioning drones (kittehsurf excepted) – minds so dulled by sycophancy they can’t even assess incontrovertible evidence placed in front of their eyes. But let me try to reason with the madding crowd.

To Daz, you see, PZ Myers is staking a lot on his claim that no feminists defend Islamic violence against women. On the basis of his now proven ignorance, he has determined – in a scripted public statement – that Condell is “a racist cretin” and continues witheringly “Way to go, Pat! Teach those strawfeminists a thing or two! I really don’t know of ANY feminists who think anything on that list is at all acceptable”

An apology should about now be forthcoming from anyone with basic intellectual self-respect, or who wants to gain respect from others, and ideally a new commitment to research before abusing others. Simply asking Mr.Condell for the names of some feminists who have made him think as he does would have been a civilized and intelligent start.

Note that Greer is no “mysterious feminist” as Myers puts it. If I have to explain that I’m wasting my time here. Moreover, since feminist sympathy for Islamic oppression of women is so commonly found, if Myers cares to nominate how many feminists would convince him that this is so, I’ll quote them for him. Upon which he’ll agree he’s changed his mind, and will retract and apologize for his slurs on Condell. Fair enough?

As to ‘Rutee Katreya’ of “Fuck you, you talking point spewing fuckhead” – you might want to take your medication, then either re-watch the Youtube clip, or preferably read the transcript here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3570412.htm . Try to remain calm, and accept you might just be wrong – it assists comprehension.

For all readers left on this thread, let me quote pertinent points from the transcript [my emphasis]:

Sharon Lapkin [questioning Greer]: “…In your book The Whole Woman, you defended the practice of female genital mutilation as a legitimate facet of cultural identity and you’ve also justified your failure to speak out against honour killings on the grounds that it’s very tricky to try and change another culture. What good would it be for me to go over there and try to tell them what to do? As an outspoken advocate of women’s sexual rights over the past 40 years, why are you hiding behind cultural relativism and condemning and not condemning the murder and mutilation of women?

Greer: “…Now, when it comes to cutting your own body about, there are lots of the things that go on that I think are fairly revolting. I think piercings are probably fairly revolting, depending on where they are. I’m not a great fan of tattoos either but I WOULD NEVER DREAM OF TELLING PEOPLE…THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DO THAT.”

A little later the host Tony Jones tries to come to terms with Greer:

TONY JONES: But Germaine – can I just interrupt there? Germaine, if it were the case anywhere that that was a fact, that that was the reason for female genital mutilation, including clitoral excision, would you be against that naturally?

GERMAINE GREER: Look, this is just a bit too difficult…. WE CAN’T REALLY ADJUDICATE IN THIS.

A little later another audience member tries again with Greer:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Germaine, I just wanted to go back to your point before about equating female genital mutilation with other cosmetic procedures…I mean it’s not exactly a voluntary process is it?

TONY JONES: Okay. Germaine, a brief answer?

GERMAINE GREER: It’s NOT SOMETHING I COULD DECIDE. Certainly if you’re talking about children below the age of consent, then this would be true. But I ask you to remember that we perform circumcisions on boys at birth and they don’t get a chance to say yes or no to that and it is a painful procedure. Insofar as anybody is subject to mutilation as a child, this would appear to us to be completely unacceptable but we are going to have to be a bit more rigorous about it and a bit less…

TONY JONES: You mean more rigorous IN STOPPING IT HAPPENING TO CHILDREN or more rigorous about what we think of it?

GERMAINE GREER: NO, a bit rigorous in establishing why it is we’re so sure that what other people do is wrong, whereas what we do happens to be right. It’s not that easy.

So, Greer is asked to condemn female genital mutilation several times, and each time refuses, defending it by comparing it with getting piercings, tattoos, cosmetic procedures, and male foreskin circumcision – in each case not to call for the banning of these other things, but to ensure female genital mutilation is NOT condemned. Note particularly the last question asked to her by the host, where she’s specifically asked does she want it to stop happening to CHILDREN, and she responds unequivocally NO. Now, if that doesn’t sound like a defence, you’re blinded by prejudice.